


No Arabic

by Gamebird



Series: Gamebird's TOG Series [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 1099, Canon-Typical Violence and Gore, Enemies to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, communication and language issues, first meeting and falling in love, historical setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 18:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gamebird/pseuds/Gamebird
Summary: Yusuf has every reason to hate the invaders and none more than this one named Nicolò, as undying as Yusuf has found himself to be. But the mystery of their condition fades to the background as they find common cause in defending the innocent, protecting each other, and changing history.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Gamebird's TOG Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138370
Comments: 95
Kudos: 141
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Meeting In Jericho

**Author's Note:**

> Linaxart (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/linaxart) provided four fantastic pieces of art for this fic! I am so privileged to have worked with her. You'll find her map at the bottom of chapter 1, the guys walking on chapter 3, and portraits of Nicolò and Yusuf in chapters 7 and 8 as they each respectively share a tender moment. 
> 
> Beta services were provided by several people and I am grateful to all of them, for these have not been my best months for writing or brain function. Quincette helped me with Islam and cultural issues, along with some language pointers and story structure. Darkswanone helped me on writing, flow, and feelings. Treefrogie84 got me to spell Nicolò's name correctly. (They were technically helping me for another fic set after this one, and on behalf of Fandom Trumps Hate, but the advice was good so I applied it everywhere.) Lina helped me with some historical accuracy points. Again, my great thanks for helping me with this project.

_1099 AD, July_

Yusuf hurried anxiously through a cramped alley in Jericho, listening for signs of a struggle. He had seen three invaders chase a woman down here while she clutched a bundle to her chest. If they caught her, they would rape and kill her, or the other way around. It didn't matter to the monstrous men these Frankish invaders were. Some said they were possessed of demons.

Yusuf thought that was too kind; it implied they weren't to blame and he definitely blamed them. _They_ were the ones who had chosen to march all day from Jerusalem so they could attack the peaceful city of Jericho – not some demon. _They_ had overrun the city's incomplete walls without so much as waiting for the morn or attempting to negotiate a surrender. _They_ had gone straight to killing simply because they could, and they wanted to. Their presence here angered and repulsed him, but he was not an angel or a demon who could win the day with naught but a wish. He was only one man.

He heard a garbled cry of pain and a rattle against a door to his left. Fearing he was too late, he tried to open it, but there was a weight against it. He shoved it open violently, stumbling over a Frankish man on the floor who was bleeding copiously from a slash across one side of his neck. He reached for Yusuf, who kicked the enemy's arm away in disgust. The man fell back, gurgling. His eyes rolled up in his head.

Only then did Yusuf lift his head. Two paces from him was another Frank, sword extended toward him, glistening red in the uncertain light of the oil lamp. The man was crouched in a combat stance but didn't attack. That was odd; he could have done so at any point while Yusuf was distracted. To Yusuf's relief, he saw the woman against the wall on the far side of the invader. She said, "He killed them! They came at me and he came from behind and killed them."

'Them'. Yusuf tried to blink away the tunnel-vision of combat. To his left was the third Frank – dead on the floor. He looked back to the woman. She was unharmed. The bundle she was holding was a baby. It was fussing in the healthy manner of an upset baby, not one that was wounded or dying (which Yusuf had heard enough times to know the difference – damn these invaders and their stupid unholy war). Next to her were two small children, barely more than toddlers. They clung to her robes, one on each side. They hadn't been with her when he'd seen her dart between buildings and accidentally attract the attention of these predators.

His eyes settled back on the Frank between them, who had, puzzlingly, still not attacked him. He recognized the man with a start. This was the one who had killed him four different times. They'd fought on the road to Jericho last week and before that on the walls of Jerusalem, and before that in front of the gates, and before _that_ in Yusuf's very first battle, when they'd burned the first siege tower the invading Franks had tried to assemble.

"You!" He hated this man. He would have thought he was a curse sent by God to afflict the faithful with unstoppable foes, yet Yusuf himself was the same – rising from the dead and shrugging off his wounds, to the alarm and consternation of his allies. It was why he was hunting Franks alone. (Well, that and the men he'd been with had been killed. They didn't get up again. He did.)

With a snarl, he raised his scimitar toward the man, the tip of his blade extending next to the Frank's. The Frank batted it aside and held his place, baring his teeth in a threat that would have been more convincing if he'd been trying to hit Yusuf instead of his weapon. Yusuf looked at his scimitar, where some of the blood from the Frank's weapon had transferred to his steel. Frankish blood.

The man had turned on his own for some reason. Did he want the woman all to himself? If so, why wasn't he attacking Yusuf? Yusuf knew the man wasn't afraid of him. Never in their clashes had he been hesitant or fearful. He didn't look fearful now – just … determined. There had to be another reason. Curiosity stayed Yusuf's hand.

Yusuf wiped his blade on the forearm of his shirt, again giving a perfect opportunity for attack and warily watching his foe to see what the man would do. Instead, the Frank's sword point dropped a few inches and he relaxed slightly. So. They would not fight this time. Good. He was getting tired of killing the same man and the woman and her children were more important anyway.

Defiant of the danger, Yusuf sheathed his weapon. Behind him, he heard someone pounding on a door in the distance. There were yells and the distant din of altercations as the chaos continued. Yusuf held up a placating hand to the man – one of them had to be the voice of reason here. He tried to shut the door. The dead man's arm was in the way. He kicked it aside and shut it anyway.

Turning to the invader, Yusuf challenged him in Arabic, "Why are you doing this?"

The man answered in a tense, hurried voice – several sentences in whatever Frankish dialect he spoke. Not only did Yusuf not know the words, he didn't even know which language they were from. He heard 'Jerusalem', though. Yusuf said, "Wait. Stop. Small … smaller words?" He doubted even that would be enough for him to understand, but they might as well try. "Do you know Arabic?"

The invader hesitated, then said simply, "Jerusalem."

"What about it?"

The man's sword tip dipped lower and he straightened. To the casual eye, he was simply holding the sword down and out, angled. Yusuf could see he was still poised, just not as much. The man looked between the two dead Franks, then back at the woman who was quieting the baby. Looking back to Yusuf, the man pointed at the woman with his free hand.

The Frank said in halting Arabic, "No Jerusalem. No women." He made a stabbing gesture with his sword, to the side. "No children." He made a short slash. He shook his head, his expression turning upset. "No. No." He shook his head and waited a beat as though hoping Yusuf could make sense of this. He gestured between himself and Yusuf and lifted his sword as though to set himself for an attack. "Yes … men. Yes God."

Yusuf tilted his head, outraged at what he was thinking the man meant. "You mean you don't want what happened at Jerusalem to happen here? The killing of women and children?" His voice turned angry. Why did this arrogant Frank get to 'decide' these things? And _now_?! _Here_? Less than a week before, _this man_ had chased him out of the city and fought him on the road as he'd defended refugees fleeing the invading hordes of Franks. "You were _in_ Jerusalem! You helped take it! You _fought_ me there!" His voice rose with each sentence.

The man pressed his lips together and his brows furrowed slightly in concentration. He said nothing. Yusuf suspected the stupid Frank didn't know what he was saying. Yusuf also didn't care much, as the opportunity to tell off the whole Frankish invasion force through this one man wasn't one Yusuf was going to pass up. He drew himself up and continued, "Where were you with this conscience when Ma'arra was sacked and our people were _eaten_? You draw the line at women and children, but it's fine to butcher those who would defend them? What were you going to do to those fleeing Jerusalem if you had managed to catch them? If I and the other guards hadn't turned to fight there on the road?"

The man shook his head and waved his free hand in negation. "No … No Arabic."

"Of course, you don't know Arabic, you uncivilized monster!" Enraged, Yusuf spat at the man's feet. "You're ignorant! You're an ignorant Frank who came here for coin! Valuing money above all else while you mouth blasphemies about a holy mission! When did you change your mind if what happened in Jerusalem offended you so much? When you found its coffers too empty for your pleasure? Or was it when you ran out of innocents to put to the sword?"

The man said nothing. He was looking from the spittle to Yusuf. There was something very chilling about the way his eyes hardened and his face blanked. He put both hands on his sword hilt and the point rose between them again. He settled into a fighting stance.

The frustration and despair of the last two months ran through Yusuf. He sneered, "Here you are in Jericho to repeat the whole thing again! And again! And again! Until we are, _all of us_ , dead! That's what you want, isn't it?" He reached out, palm toward the invader, and put it at the tip of the weapon. "Go ahead. Strike me down, then! Another corpse for your-"

The man stabbed him without hesitation or letting him finish, putting the point of his sword and a good handspan of the blade through his palm. Yusuf flinched at the pain, but he did not budge. The woman yelped. Yusuf pulled his hand back when the invader did nothing more. The wound healed.

"See? You have no power over me!" He thrust his hand closer to the invader, bypassing the tip of his blade, heedless of the danger. All the invader had to do to run his whole body through was straighten his arms. "Is this all you have? Killing and killing and killing again?" His voice dropped to a growl. "Your entire people are a pathetic excuse for human beings."

The invader swallowed, looking from his blade to Yusuf's hand to Yusuf's face. His eyes stayed there for a long beat, as the tip of his blade sank to the floor. Up close, he looked far more haggard than Yusuf would have expected any victor to be. He looked tired and worn and uncertain, his eyes hollow, dark lines under them, his lips chapped and cracked, grime over every part of him. For half a second, Yusuf felt pity for him. He was hard to hate anyone who looked so wretched. The man's lips parted and his expression softened. But then he stepped back to a more proper combat distance. He was still dangerous. Yusuf drew his scimitar.

"No!" the man yelped. He'd stepped back, but his weapon was still down and it did not rise. Yusuf, feeling himself a gullible fool, hesitated. There was no reason why he _shouldn't_ kill him, was there? Just because he looked miserable didn't mean he wasn't still an invader. Yusuf didn't want to, but he didn't know how else to resolve their impasse. Into that moment, the invader offered, "Peace?"

Yusuf's lip curled to hear that come from an invader's lips. "You know that word?"

"Peace," the man repeated hopefully. He followed it with several incomprehensible sentences in that foreign language of his. The invader held one hand out to the side, palm open. It was not a surrender. He wasn't even sheathing his weapon. But it was a cagey attempt at a peaceful gesture. Yusuf could see that. Without taking his eyes off Yusuf, the man gestured behind himself at the woman and children. In Latin, he said, "Run?"

His grudge against this man could wait for another day, when he hadn't just stumbled on the man defending a Muslim woman and her children. Yusuf answered in Arabic, because his Latin consisted of a few hundred disconnected words, derived from poems and scientific essays, not conversation. "Yes, they should run." Yusuf looked past him to the woman. "Do you know how to get out of here?"

She nodded. "I came back for the children. I did not know it would be so bad. Is it true they will kill everyone?" She made a confused gesture at the invader.

"I don't know. I have heard terrible things, but I left Jerusalem the day the siege broke." He indicated the man. "This one would know better than I and we see what he thinks of his countrymen." Grudgingly, he had to admit the man had (at least and apparently) found some manner of breaking point with the rest of the monsters, if the two dead Franks here meant anything.

The woman said, "I know how to get out through the sewers so we don't have to go near the gates, but I would have to get to the tanner's street first." She looked down at the two children.

"I will come with you and make sure you get out safely," Yusuf said. He turned to the invader and said in badly conjugated Latin, "We run. Good-bye."

The man nodded once, then went to the woman's side and knelt to gather up one of the children, who cringed away from him.

"No- What-?" Yusuf said in surprise. The woman made an objecting noise as well, but she didn't dare to interfere. The man's other hand still held his naked and bloody sword. He picked up the child. The boy keened and pushed at his shoulder but didn't struggle beyond that.

"Do you not even understand Latin?" Yusuf asked in outrage, wondering if he had misspoke, although by necessity he was back to speaking Arabic. " _We_ are leaving. Not _you_."

"We run," the man said in Latin, standing. The tip of his sword described a small circle, perhaps indicating the room. "Good-bye?"

"You don't even understand Latin," Yusuf said in disbelief, no longer a question. His head pulled back. "You _are_ a Latin! A Frank! How ignorant are you?" The man ignored him to turn to the child in his arm. He said soothing things to him in his own language. "Stupid Frank," Yusuf muttered.

Frustrated, he looked at the woman, who held the baby and had the toddler, a little girl, on the other side of her. If she had to lead the children, then the going would be slow. But if the invader carried one and Yusuf carried the other, then they could hurry. He hadn't intended to keep company with the man … but he supposed he could be useful for now. To the woman, Yusuf said, "Fine, then. I'll take the other."

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/192019661@N02/51035867066/)


	2. Night Watch

They paused at the intersection with the tanner's street. To the opposite end that they were headed were three Franks busy piling bales of leather and hide on a cart. There was a torch flickering above them and two robed bodies of dead Muslims next to the business they were looting. He scowled and fingered the handle of his sheathed scimitar, thinking he could take them. There were only three and he would survive any wounds they inflicted. But what good would it do? His own words came back to him about killing and killing and accomplishing nothing. Plus, if he wanted to kill a Frank, there was one right next to him.

"No," said that one, speaking in a quiet voice.

Yusuf looked back at him, brows raised at the man's impertinence. "'No'? _You_ tell me no?" He pointed down the street. "Those are your people, murdering and thieving. If you had any honor, _you'd_ be the one doing something about it."

The man had never sheathed his sword, despite holding the child on one hip. Now it wavered about half-high. " _No_ ," the man said emphatically, looking pointedly between the looters and Yusuf in case there was any confusion in what he meant. Yusuf wasn't confused. The tension hung thick in the air.

The man gestured with the sword in the direction where the woman waited with the baby. "Run?" he said in Latin. "Peace?" he added in Arabic. His expression was searching and more intent than anyone Yusuf had ever met. It was intimidating for someone to look at him like that, like they were staring into his soul with those freakish pale eyes.

"This is not peace," Yusuf said, but it sounded like a complaint rather than the grudging threat he intended. Everyone who was smart had already fled Jericho or hidden themselves in cellars and bolt holes. Killing these three Franks wouldn't save the lives of the two Muslims already dead, but it would risk the woman's and children's lives. Reluctantly, he agreed, "We run."

They emerged from the sewers into a stony ditch bordered by fields of sugar cane, more than waist-high at this point in the summer. They were halfway across the field when a yell sounded behind them. Someone on the tumbled walls had spotted them. A crossbow bolt whisked through the grass and they broke into a run. The next bolt hit him right in the back, punching through his leather armor like it wasn't there.

It was the first time he'd been hit by one of these things and he hated it instantly. It wasn't fair that the invaders could reach out across the battlefield and puncture him without an opportunity to dodge or fight back. His chest ached and it was suddenly hard to breathe – a lung shot. He staggered, struggling to go forward more on behalf of the child he was carrying, than his own. He stumbled to his knees, shifting the child in front of him to protect her from being the victim of some other bolt. "Frank!" he croaked out. "Take her …"

Sheathing his sword, the Frank came back, but he didn't take the child. He grabbed the bolt and yanked it from Yusuf's back. Another bolt sunk into flesh, but it wasn't into Yusuf's or the child. The Frank grunted. He slung his free arm around Yusuf and hustled them forward. Yusuf's feet felt stupid, like they'd forgotten how to carry him. His vision and balance were confused. He almost went down when the Frank stumbled, but then the man recovered and was hoisting Yusuf by his belt and driving them on until they were out of range of the cursed weapons.

The spinning of Yusuf's head retreated and he was healed enough to breathe without his lungs simply refusing to inflate. He pulled away, still swaying on his feet but well enough that he didn't need the support of an enemy. The man reached down and jerked a bolt from his own calf. Another dangled from his lower back, the head of it tangled in chain mail and padding. He brushed it off the same, pausing to examine the damage to the armor. Yusuf flinched as he heard another bolt thunk into the ground behind them, but they seemed to be out of range.

The man made a short laugh and waved the point of his sword in the air, describing an arc with it that was perhaps that of the crossbow bolts. He said several things in Frankish and pointed at his chain mail, then looked at Yusuf for response. Yusuf stared at him until the man's hopeful levity left him. It was this man's own people trying to kill them. He – this man – bore some responsibility for their conduct. That was how it worked. Yusuf shook his head in disapproval and moved further away from the range of the bolts.

The children clung to them fiercely and silently now. The woman led them down the east road. Yusuf glanced back at Jericho, wishing things were different, wishing he were a hundred men rather than one, wishing any of his commanders were alive to tell him what his duty was. All he knew now was the conscience God granted every man. Or at least the ones who weren't Frankish invaders.

The girl he carried sniffled against him. He held her closer as they walked. This mattered – her small, warm body tucked against him, her tiny, soft hands gripping the leather of his armor and the edges of his green tabard. It was the one he'd been given as part of his uniform for being a (hastily inducted) defender of Jericho. She was alive because of him. Even if the weird Frank would have saved them without him, it had taken both of them working together to get the woman and children out safely. This was what he could do, at least for now.

Soon enough, at least two score figures became visible at the side of the road, a cluster of people who had fled Jericho. The few old men with them gave challenge. The woman with the baby answered. A lantern was unshuttered and brought forward so they could be seen and their identity verified. The woman was welcomed by her family. An elderly woman came to take the toddler from the Frank. Seeing what he was, she hesitated, then snatched the child from him. "He is an invader!"

"He … is not anymore," Yusuf said, waving her off irritably. He'd had time as they walked to reflect on the man coming back to help _him_ instead of just the child. It was also obvious that he'd been sincere in his intention to save the woman and children, enough to cut down two of his own people. That meant … something. Certainly it meant Yusuf was going to discourage them from striking him down out of hand. It chafed him to have to put himself in that position for a Frank.

"And you are a Maghrebi!" the old woman said, peering at him suspiciously in the light.

"By the Prophet's beard," he muttered in exasperation. Yusuf rolled his eyes at the ridiculous prejudice. His homeland was almost as far from here as that of the Franks, but weren't they all on the same side against the invaders? He handed off the child he was carrying to one of the men who had initially challenged them.

The man said, "You were one of the soldiers, yes?"

"I was. I am."

"He is a Maghrebi!" the woman hissed, returning to the rest of the group.

The man Yusuf was speaking to ignored the old woman. "We thank you." The words soothed Yusuf's ego, bruised as it was by the matriarch's lack of gratitude. The man shifted the child he was holding and held up the lamp to inspect Yusuf. His tabard was stained with blood and tattered in many places. Beneath it, his armor bore cuts and gashes. "You clearly saw much fighting. Are you injured? You can travel with us to Shuna. We should be there by morning, insha'Allah."

"Neither of them can travel with us!" the elderly woman shrilled. "They are both foreigners!"

Yusuf tried to tune her out – she was old, she'd been driven from her home, she might have sons or grandsons dead at the hands of the invaders – of course she was angry, just like Yusuf was angry. He told the man, "I am not wounded. You should go. After the sack of Jerusalem, the invaders sent troops down the main roads to kill any they could catch who had escaped the city. They might do it again. I will stay here and stop any from following you."

The man nodded and shot the invader an uncertain look but said nothing more. There was nothing that needed to be said, not if they weren't going with them. The refugees moved off, heading down the road in the dark. The invader started to follow, but Yusuf stuck his hand out. "No."

The invader looked at him questioningly and Yusuf thought to himself that this – this was the time when he should strike. There were no children in the way, no other invaders who could interfere, just this one Frank to do away with. If he was looking for his duty, this was it. He swallowed and chewed his lip in a grimace as he considered how shallow this impulse was, no different from the narrow-minded old woman who had complained of him being a Maghrebi even as he delivered her rescued family members. It was no different from his own complaint to the man that they had been reduced to nothing but killing.

It was wrong. But still, he would be judged by the company he kept and if that company was some blood-stained invader, then he would be accountable for that. The man was still looking at him with those intense eyes, as though waiting for Yusuf to come to a decision about their fate.

"Why …" Yusuf hesitated. He didn't know how to communicate this and he was reluctant to say something so unaccountably rude to anyone, even to this man. It made him feel small and petty but he tried to do it anyway. "Why don't you go off on your own now?" He added in Latin, "Run? Good-bye?" He made an abortive shooing motion. "You should go. I should not be seen with you."

The man looked up and down the road. It only occurred to Yusuf at that point that he had nowhere to go. He'd betrayed his people. Now, maybe there were none of his people living who knew this, and maybe he hadn't been seen clearly enough as they ran from the walls to identify him, but an honorable man would not lie. Plus, perhaps he didn't even _want_ to rejoin his people after what he'd seen in Jerusalem. Yusuf felt an unwanted pang from inflicting this on someone.

"Good-bye?" The man sounded hurt and worried, which made Yusuf feel worse. The Frank came closer, gesturing between them as he leaned forward earnestly. "God. You. I. God." He pointed upward.

Yusuf sighed guiltily. "No, that is not-"

"Yes, yes." The man held his hands up, palms toward him in surrender or conciliation, then reached carefully for his knife. He clearly wasn't being combative. Yusuf stepped back warily anyway. The man cut himself on the hand with a wince and showed the healing mark to Yusuf. "God," he said emphatically. "You and I." He wiped his knife and put it away. " _God_."

That was hard to argue with. Yusuf was not inclined to credit the supernatural. He'd had no vision or visitation and surely God would not grant a miracle to a Frank the same as to one of the faithful. He hadn't blamed the Frankish invasion on demons and he wasn't going to blame demons for this one's healing. The name of God didn't burn in his mouth, that was obvious.

But if it wasn't demons, then it had to be God – the same God Yusuf had never believed existed as a separate divine entity. In his mind, God was like the Greek concept of a muse – a word used for inspiration and the inner urge to be a good person. God was the reason they prayed and built society around helping and supporting each other. If that were the case, why then would they heal? They were just men – both of them – and as far as he knew, neither of them were more kind or giving than others. On the other hand, if he had he been wrong about God all this time, then it meant the more literal among the followers of the Prophet were right.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I don't even know your name. What- No. Let us start again as though we are strangers who have not killed one another several times already." He backed up a few steps, spread his arms to indicate himself, and touched his chest. "I am Yusuf."

"Nicolò." He touched his chest the same as Yusuf had. Yusuf felt a surprising relief at having a name for him. It made it easier to see him as a person rather than one of the rampaging horde of invaders.

Yusuf nodded soberly, trying to treat this as any other first meeting. "Nicolò," he repeated. "Where are you from?"

The man hesitated as though parsing the words. It was a common, basic phrase and Yusuf had articulated it carefully. "Genova."

His sincere intention to look past Nicolò's origin crashed. Yusuf looked to the heavens and turned in a circle as he let out a loud, hollow laugh. "God has such a sense of humor. The Genoese? _You_ are Genoese? Even if we are strangers, I am supposed to kill you! Your people would be the ones who sacked Mahdia, where I was born, where I grew up!"

Yusuf shook his fist in Nicolò's direction and he would have been serious if the whole situation were not so ludicrous. He could not win for losing here. "I would split you in two if I thought it would do anything but give me a second enemy to fight. Were you part of that assault? Did you raze my city and drive my family from their home?"

Nicolò didn't answer. He looked confused, if anything. There were probably too many words, said with too much emotion. Yusuf simplified it. "Mahdia! You know that word?" Yusuf demanded. " _Mahdia_? You should."

"Yes. Mahdia." Nicolò cast a quick look at the stars and pointed west, which was the correct general direction for the city of Mahdia.

"Were you there?"

"Mahdia … Ah … Genova? No peace?" Nicolò pointed at his sword and made a gesture like he was holding a sword hilt in two hands. He pantomimed swinging it at an imaginary foe.

"Yes, I know they fought! _Were. You. There_? _You?_ " Yusuf pointed at Nicolò as though the extra emphasis would get his meaning across.

"I … from Genova. Nicolò di Genova." He pointed to himself, still looking confused and now also wary.

Yusuf waved a dismissive hand. "Yes, I know you're from Genova. I understood that part." He had to concede the man was trying. Yusuf tried a different approach. "I don't suppose you speak Turkish? Oghuz? Coptic? I am fluent enough in those to hold a conversation, but in Greek or Latin, I know only a handful of words." No answer. Yusuf took a deep breath, marshalled his patience, and tried a sentence or two in each language he knew well, including the North African ones he didn't expect any Frank to know. From Nicolò's lack of reaction, he was right.

"A lovely situation we find ourselves in, then," Yusuf said to himself in frustration, reverting back to Arabic. "I can't take vengeance because you don't even know why I'd be doing it. God has truly sent you to humble me. That must be it." He shrugged his hands through the air helplessly. "Maybe I have been wrong about God all these years and you are a trial that will lead me to the true faith. Is that it?"

"Ah … No … No Arabic."

"Or you are only here to try my patience." But that Yusuf said pessimistically to himself. He looked back at Jericho, which was at enough elevation above the Jordan river valley to still be visible. Portions of it were on fire, making it easier to see. The theological argument was only a distraction from what was real – people suffering and what Yusuf could do to prevent that. He refocused. "They still might send raiders down the road," he said. "If they do, I hope you fight them instead of me."

Nicolò made no answer, but was watching him as though waiting for direction. "Come, then," Yusuf told him. They found a spot where the road wound around a wood-topped hill before a final dip toward the river. Yusuf pointed in the direction of Jericho and then to his eyes. "I'm going to stand watch." He pointed at Nicolò and then at the ground. "You sleep."

Nicolò sat, resting his elbows on his raised knees. He clenched and unclenched his hands, staring into nothingness. Yusuf stood and looked at him, seeing in Nicolò's body language the same frustration and unease he felt in himself. He felt sympathy for the man after such a day as he must have had – Nicolò must have had a full day's march from Jerusalem to Jericho, fully armored in the summer heat, then battle, turning on his own people, and then marching through the night carrying a child, now stuck with a disagreeable person such as Yusuf with no way to communicate anything more meaningful than 'my name is-' and 'I'm from-', with one of those having resulted in Yusuf yelling at him and shaking a fist in his direction. Yusuf had two different reasons to hate him with every fiber of his being and yet here he was feeling sorry for him. It was ridiculous. He sighed and resigned himself to his feelings.

"Nicolò?" The man looked up at him. "Lie down. Sleep." Yusuf gestured at the ground when Nicolò did nothing, then laid down himself to demonstrate. "Lie down." He held up his hand vertical, then pivoted it horizontal. "Sleep." He shut his eyes and badly mimed snoring.

Nicolò laughed hollowly a couple times and laid down. "Sleep." He mangled the word, but it was understandable.

"Yes." Yusuf sat up. "You sleep." Nicolò huffed, but he stayed down. Yusuf stood again and found a tree to lean against as he kept watch. Nicolò slept – curling on his side and holding himself like he was cold … or very alone. Had Yusuf killed him, no one would in his society would have judged him at fault. Nor, probably, would those in Nicolò's. They would have congratulated either of them. But they'd killed each other enough. It was time to try something different. Yusuf went back to watching the road.

Considering it was the dead of night, the road was very busy. Most were on foot. Some had wagons or donkeys. All were quiet, skulking away from the burning city or from the many farmhouses dotting the valley that they'd fled to initially. At a later point in the night, a single rider approached on a horse. They were leading another horse. They came near the hill at an ambling walk, but kicked up to a gallop to hurry by.

Nicolò sat up at the clatter of hooves, then stood and half drew his sword.

"Nicolò?" Yusuf said in a hushed voice.

"Si?" A pause. "Ah, um, yes?"

"Peace."

Nicolò looked in the direction of the horses. The rider was already slowing, well past the wooded hill that was an excellent position for an ambush, which was why Yusuf had chosen it. "No men?" Nicolò asked.

"No." None of those passing had looked like armed men up to no good, so Yusuf had done nothing. If there were raiders, the time had already come and gone when they would have shown up. Nicolò pushed his sword back into the scabbard and scrubbed at his face with both hands. Yusuf told him, "I will sleep. You stand watch."

"No Arabic."

"Yes, I know that, you stupid Frank," Yusuf said without any heat. He was too tired to be angry, too upset over having spent the last few hours stewing over the defeats at Jerusalem and Jericho and imagining all the murder and destruction the Franks were cheerfully visiting on his people. Except for _this_ Frank. He moved next to Nicolò and pointed between Nicolò's eyes and the direction of the city. "Watch." He pointed at himself. "Sleep."

Nicolò nodded and said, "Sleep."

" _I_ sleep. Not you. You watch." He patiently pointed at himself and then Nicolò in sync with his words.

"Watch. I watch."

"Yes, watch." Yusuf laid down.

"Watch," Nicolò said again. "Sleep. You sleep. I sleep. I watch. You watch." He was talking to himself, so Yusuf ignored him. He waited to see that Nicolò took up the same position at the tree that Yusuf had done earlier and seemed to understand his orders despite the language barrier. Then Yusuf shut his eyes and slumbered, too tired to worry about the Frank doing him in as he slept.


	3. Inhospitable Lands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Linaxart (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/linaxart).

In the morning, there was a thick pillar of smoke rising from the city and no soldiers they could see. They went down to the road to meet a wagon full of refugees. Yusuf went ahead and spoke with them, determining the invaders had looted and pillaged into the night, then set fire to the place as they withdrew their forces west (away from them and back to Jerusalem) with their spoils.

They hadn't tried to hold the city, which meant the refugees he was speaking with were considering attempting to return after a day or two elsewhere. Jericho was their home, after all. They were hopeful of some organized military response from nearby areas might hold the city. Yusuf had his doubts – it could be retaken easily, sure, but Jericho's famed walls had been toppled by earthquakes long ago. This was how the Franks had simply overrun the place the day before and how so much of the populace had escaped. How could anyone hold Jericho against the invaders?

He returned to Nicolò as the wagon went on its way east. The morning light marked the first time he'd had a good solid look at the man. Not that he would call the visage 'good'. His skin was sickly pale where it wasn't smeared with blood or dirt. He had darkened hollows under his eyes. His eyes were also pale, an unhealthy hue of blue-grey like a cloud-ridden daytime sky or the sea under a haze. His hair was the color of dead grass, oily, straight, and matted down over his skull where it wasn't darkened with dried blood.

His face's proportions were odd. One of his eyes didn't open as much as the other and he had a mole on one cheek. His beard was patchy, like the first growth of some teenager, yet he was at least twice that in age. He was so repulsive looking that it was fascinating.

"You are an ugly bastard," Yusuf remarked, sizing the man up. Physically, they were roughly the same size with Nicolò slightly shorter, which still put them both of them on the large side for men of their time. Yusuf wondered how awful he looked in return, with both of them coming off weeks or months of military campaigning and the last week of intermittent combat. Yusuf had had more access to baths and laundry. The Franks, not so much. It was clear Nicolò's chain armor and ragged tabard had been in continuous use for too long. The tabard might have started off white with some odd Christian sigil on it, but it was splotchy now and rust-colored in spots. It smelled like his armor padding had mildew. Yusuf wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Watch?" Nicolò pointed at the wagon that was getting further down the road.

Yusuf looked after it and scratched his beard contemplatively. He was still tired from the night, still dispirited and not sure what to do. "Yes. I suppose we could watch the wagon. I have no desire to walk through the horror that is Jericho in the morning light and it is empty for the time being anyway." He grimaced in the direction of the city, feeling again that he'd failed in not somehow stopping the entire mob of invaders by himself. Nicolò turned that way, too, for a long moment, then made the sign of the cross. He looked to Yusuf after, exhaling heavily. It looked like an apology.

"Perhaps God will listen to you. It's not like our prayers did any good," Yusuf said wearily. He hoped the Frank didn't understand him, as his words were some of the worst blasphemy. Was God really out there, keeping them alive? If so, why did He not clarify His purpose so that Yusuf knew better how to serve and what he should do next? He felt unmoored, drifting. Yusuf waited several long beats for some divine inspiration. The only thing that happened was that Nicolò took a few steps in the direction of the wagon and looked back at him. Well. It was a direction to go. And maybe that was all the sign he was going to get.

Yusuf might have wallowed in depression if it weren't for having someone walking next to him, occasionally looking at him as though expecting interaction. Yusuf eventually obliged. "How much Latin do you know?" No answer, but he was asking the question in Arabic. Yusuf tried to dig up his training in the language. "I don't know much of it myself, but let me see …" In Latin, he put together, "Do you understand me?"

"Yes," Nicolò answered immediately, his expression brightening. "I know Latin. I-" And there were a lot of words Yusuf couldn't make out. He waved his hand in negation at Nicolò, causing him to fall silent.

In Latin, Yusuf said, "I no. No Latin. Little. Little ..." What was the word for 'speak'? He couldn't bring it to mind. He reverted to Arabic. "This isn't a lot of help, but at least you are not as ignorant as I thought. Let's work on getting a language between us so we can discuss why neither of us can keep the other dead." He counted off numbers in Latin – he remembered those – and then repeated in Arabic, showing his fingers as he counted.

"Yes Arabic?" Nicolò said in a happy tone. He repeated the numbers in Latin confidently and the ones in Arabic with some hesitation. Yusuf corrected him on pronunciation. Nicolò repeated again carefully. Yusuf corrected, Nicolò repeated. He moved on to body parts and their accoutrements next. Nicolò was attentive and persistent, which struck Yusuf as impressive for a foreigner, even if there were certain letter sounds he didn't seem able to replicate. It was a good way to keep his mind off the two fallen cities behind them.

The morning heated quickly as the sun rose above them. They reached the crossing of the Jordan river, where there was a well-maintained ford. As it should be in any civilized land, on each side of the river, the ford included a pavilion surrounded by trees and a well that drew upon the river's water. Travelers could take rest for the heat of the day or wait their turn while some other wagon made its way across.

Nicolò went to his knees in the river, scooping it up to splash on his face and hair, then sucking draughts of it from his cupped hands. Yusuf paused next to him. There was a drinking fountain at each pavilion, but perhaps the Frank was unfamiliar with such things. Yusuf had heard that amenities taken for granted in Muslim lands were not to be found outside them. In any case, the sediment stirred up by the wagon going before them had mainly settled so Nicolò's behavior was merely odd rather than unsanitary. They resumed crossing after Nicolò rose, dripping.

On the other side, the refugees had unharnessed their oxen and turned them out in a paddock for the purpose.

"No … No run?" Nicolò asked, gesturing down the road and using the Latin word for 'run' as he had the day before.

"It's hot," Yusuf answered. "We'll rest through the heat of the day and then move on. I'll go see if they have anything to eat. You have to be as hungry as I am and I've heard you Franks are cannibals if left to your own devices." He wasn't angry about it, just matter-of-fact, a dry joke to himself he knew Nicolò wouldn't understand.

He spoke with those in the wagon. They'd seen the pair of them following, obviously, and had come to the decision among themselves that they meant no harm. They had no food they were willing to share, but they gave him a bowl and a cloth to clean himself.

Yusuf scooped up some water and carried it back to some shaded stones near where Nicolò was standing in the road. He washed his face and hands, enjoying the trickle of cool water down the back of his neck. It was summer in the Middle East and quite hot today. "You should not stand in the sun like that, stupid Frank. You're dressed badly for this weather in that heavy chain armor. You should rest in the shade like a sensible person, while you have the chance."

"Eh?"

"The sun. Solis." He pointed upward. Nicolò squinted at the blazing orb, his face scrunching up to a ridiculous degree, his upper teeth prominent. He looked to Yusuf, who said, "This is the shade. No sun. No solis." Yusuf waved his hand back and forth in the shaded area.

"The sun," Nicolò said, pointing at it. Yusuf nodded. Nicolò looked up again, not squinting this time, just staring. He kept staring. Seconds ticked by, with Yusuf expecting with each one that the man would quit staring straight at the sun itself, like he was defying it to burn his eyes out.

"What are you- Stop that!" Yusuf called to him. "You will blind yourself, idiot!" Nicolò rubbed at his eyes. "Come here!" Yusuf called, exasperated. Nicolò started in his direction and immediately stumbled because he was still rubbing his eyes, assuming he could see at all. Concerned, Yusuf hurried over to him and led him to the shade. He was embarrassed the refugees might see him actually aiding the Frank rather than simply traveling the same road with him, but there was no help for it.

He sat Nicolò on one of the stones and held up two fingers in front of him. "Can you see? How many fingers?"

Nicolò blinked and squinted. His eyes had watered such that tears tracked down from them. "Fingers?"

"Yes. How many?"

"How-?"

"Count them. How many fingers?"

"Two." Nicolò wiped his face.

"Good. Don't look at the sun," he chided. "How do you know if your eyes will heal from that? Maybe the healing only works on cuts and things. Stupid Frank." With a sigh, Yusuf sat down on the next stone, shaking his head in exasperation. It was amazing the invaders had managed to defeat them in any capacity. Ignorant savages, the lot of them.

Nicolò was looking at him, a half-forgotten smile on his face. He seemed to be studying Yusuf's features. Yusuf noticed and looked back at him, wondering at the intensity Nicolò could put in something as simple as looking at a person. Very quietly, Nicolò said, "Sei bello." It was like it slipped out unintentionally, the sort of thing you said when confronted with the obvious.

"What?"

Nicolò straightened abruptly, the smile vanishing. His skin reddened like some delayed reaction to the sun. He pointed upward. "The sun. The sun bello. Sole bello."

"I don't understand. What is 'bello'? Bright?"

Nicolò shook his head, made a dismissive wave of his hand, and looked away. "No Arabic."

Yusuf gave the back of the Frank's head a long look, suspicious about the exchange. He would have assumed the man was insulting him for calling him stupid, but he wasn't reacting like someone who'd issued an insult. Then again, who knew with Franks? Yusuf grunted and picked up the bowl with the cloth. "Here. Take this. Clean yourself. You're disgusting." Nicolò was a bit cleaner than he would have been without the moment in the river, but he could still do with some scrubbing.

Nicolò took the bowl and bowed his head formally and saying, "Thank you," in Arabic. For once, he had the pronunciation right.

"Ah, so you know that word already. I have not taught you that. You're welcome," he added belatedly as Nicolò wiped down his face. One of the refugees called out for the midday prayer. Yusuf looked in their direction and winced. He wasn't sure how he felt about things between himself and God. He'd managed not to dwell much on the supernatural aspects of his life-beyond-death until Nicolò had cut himself and directly attributed the ability to Him. If He were real, then what of all the prayers where he'd simply gone through the motions for the sake of family and community?

Nicolò looked between Yusuf and the others. "You …? God?" He made a very abbreviated pantomime of prostration for prayer.

"No," Yusuf said. "I am filthy." He wore blood-stained clothing he'd slept on the ground in. "A little hand and face wash is not enough to take off the pollution of killing people last night." It was an excuse. He could have made himself presentable. He could have cleaned with river water or the fountains provided for this express purpose. He could have even done tayammum and cleaned with sand. But even though he'd prayed a dozen times since fleeing Jerusalem, he'd never done it with the thought that God was actually paying attention to him.

If his healing was proof of such a thing, then it meant God was on the side of the Franks as well, for here was Nicolò with the same gift. It seemed more reasonable that God had nothing to do with it and Nicolò was wrong. But if that were the case, then he had no explanation for the healing at all. If there were no divine purpose to it … then the only purpose it had was the one they made of it, just like anything else in their life. He puzzled over this while they waited, coming to no final decision.

By the time the travelers moved on, Yusuf had added water, ox, wagon, bowl, river, road, rope, brick, stone, tree, grass, mud, and dust to Nicolò's rapidly growing repertoire of words, along with basic colors and shapes. By dusk, they should make it to the town of Shuna that had been mentioned the previous night.

Yusuf was not familiar with this land, having started his life some twenty-four hundred kilometers west in a place that would later be known as Tunisia. Most of his adult life had been spent in Cairo, still five hundred kilometers away by the straightest course. He'd taken trading trips as far north as Damascus, but they'd gone by way of Beirut, sticking to the coast.

He observed the landscape of scrubby, rugged mountains rising over green, fertile valleys as Nicolò doggedly counted to one hundred over and over again. He made for an odd companion and not for the first time, Yusuf wondered why the man continued in walking with him, further and further away from the lands his people had taken. Further into danger, into lands where he distinctly did not belong. Yusuf had no social currency here to protect himself, much less an invader. But maybe if they went far enough, they would leave the shadow of war, he could find someone to translate this man's words, and they could have a proper conversation.

"I do not know where you get your patience," Yusuf said as Nicolò began another recitation of the Arabic words he'd been taught so far. "You need to give me some of it, for I am running short." Nicolò hesitated, smiled personably at him, then went back to counting. Yusuf groaned softly and rolled his eyes, but Nicolò continued. The numbers were the worst.

.

.

Shuna was not a metropolis. If Yusuf had known how minor it was, he might have chosen a different direction. The walls were no more than a high plank fence and the gate was shut – not surprising, given there was a war going on a day's walk to the west. They opened to let the wagon in after some negotiation. They closed it again when Yusuf and Nicolò approached.

"May we enter?" Yusuf asked politely, stopping a few strides from the closed gate. Nicolò was several strides further back, shifting his weight uneasily, hand on the grip of his sword.

"No," the guard said brusquely from behind the closed gate. He could be seen through a narrow slit between the planks. "Go away."

"Sir." Yusuf brought his hands together in a conciliatory gesture, undeterred by the refusal. This was a negotiation like any other mercantile work. "It is getting dark. I ask hospitality, in the Prophet's name."

"You look like trouble. You both do. I said no."

Yusuf sighed and spread his hands, showing how open and inoffensive he was. "We are hungry. We are tired. We are filthy from war. Please. I beg of your better nature."

"I said no."

He tried another tack. "You can ask the wagon you let in before us. We caused them no trouble. I am a simple soldier from Jericho and before that Jerusalem. I have fought to defend this land and all in it. We carried children out of Jericho and to safety. We ask nothing extravagant. Only what your honor requires you provide."

"You do not know me!" the guard said, raising his voice in indignation. "You question my honor? Where are you even from? You're obviously not from around here. I've never seen the likes of you!"

Well, that would be because he was in a backwater in the middle of nowhere, but Yusuf didn't say that. Still, he would have expected a gate guard to be more familiar with travelers from far regions. "I am a Maghrebi from Mahdia by way of Cairo, which is how I joined the force of Fatimid Egyptians and rallied to Jerusalem's defense."

The guard was silent for a beat because there was nothing in that recitation that was impeachable. "And what about him?"

Yusuf glanced back at Nicolò, who was watching warily. He could no longer pretend they weren't traveling companions. As shameful as that was in a general way, Yusuf found the man easy to be with. That would be difficult to explain, given the social mores of the day. He turned back to the guard. "That is Nicolò. He has turned his blade against the invaders. He is no longer among them."

"I do not care what he has done! You may take your blades and go down the road. We don't want either of you here."

Yusuf wasn't making any progress wheedling. It was time to turn things up a notch. "We are both very hungry. If we cannot find hospitality here, we may be forced to take our blades to one of these many farms and small houses, to appeal to them for what a beggar is due."

"I should kill you where you stand for that threat to our good farmers!" The guard said, rattling the mechanism for the gate in some pretense that he was going to burst forth in attack.

Yusuf was unimpressed. "Perhaps you should, but you won't. If you come out and fight, then we will account for ourselves against you. Which of you or your men wish to risk it against two seasoned soldiers who have nothing to lose? Would you deprive your fine town of Shuna of a defender in these perilous times, when you could simply provide us with food?"

He heard the guard start to say something – a continuation of his bluster – but it died in his throat. Yusuf could see the man grimace and dither through the narrow slit – because he knew Yusuf was right: feed us, or we'll go rob one of these nearby farms and you'll never hear the end of it. Or such was the threat. Yusuf thought he'd rather starve than descend to brigandry, but he was already starving and he wasn't above saying things he probably wouldn't carry through with. They weren't quite lies. Finally, the guard asked, "Do you have money?"

"No. I left all my possessions in Jericho and before that, in Jerusalem. I have nothing but what you see, which is why I humbly beg of you-"

"Oh, shut up!" The guard turned to speak to someone behind him. "Go get them some bread and sweetwater. I am done with this!"

"Thank you," Yusuf said, dispensing with the act of negotiation. His shoulders slumped with how tired and hopeless he truly felt. He wiped at his brow. It had been a very long day and the idea of ending it without food or refreshment, still clad in these stinking rags and battered armor, sleeping on the ground somewhere was thoroughly disheartening. One out of three was better than nothing.

As they waited, the guard said, "I had a cousin in Jericho. How did it go?" His voice was different now, he, too, having dispensed with the act. Now he was simply curious about events and worried for his family.

Yusuf took a step closer to have a genial conversation. "Many escaped. The invaders didn't surround the city. They just poured in one side. They seemed more interested in stealing than killing. It was not so in Jerusalem, where they surrounded the city and sought to kill all. We had to fight our way out and then they sent men to harass us as we fled."

One of those men had been Nicolò. Yusuf had beaten him to the ground and tried to cut off his head, thinking and hoping that would end the man's menace. He'd taken an ax in the spine from one of Nicolò's allies before he'd managed to finish the job. Nicolò had been the one to remove that ax, once he was restored, and to pat Yusuf's face in an absurdly friendly fashion before being run off by a surge of Yusuf's compatriots. It had been a strange exchange and the last time he'd seen the invader until he found him defending the woman in Jericho.

The guard laughed sourly. "Ah, you were not willing to fight to the death, eh?"

Yusuf pulled himself from his memories and laughed just the same. "Oh, I was willing." And he had – twice at least. "God had other plans for me."

"From the look of your armor, you very nearly did not survive for those plans."

Yusuf looked at his damaged splinted mail and the hole-riddled tabard over it. "There were several hard battles. I was very lucky. I hope your cousin has been lucky as well."

"Insha'Allah."

Yusuf nodded. "Insha'Allah."

Someone came up behind the guard, who opened the gate enough to pass Yusuf a basket and a jug. "My thanks to you," Yusuf said, taking the items and backing up.

The guard raised his voice in the same irritable vein he'd used for haggling and refusing them entry. "Keep going until you are out of sight of the town. I do not want to see you loitering and planning trouble!"

"No, of course not," Yusuf muttered. The basket contained a few hard loaves of bread. He handed half to Nicolò and tucked the jug under his arm. It was less than he'd wanted or even expected. This was truly a beggar's ration and no more than a bribe to make them go away, but there was no one to complain to about the uncivilized treatment.

To Nicolò, he gestured further down the road and said, "We go. Do you know 'go'?" Nicolò didn't answer, already busy stuffing his mouth with bread. "It's like 'run', "but slower. Slow 'run'."

Nicolò said something in Latin, around a mouthful of food.

"I don't know that word," Yusuf said.

Then Nicolò swallowed enough to say something else - bread in Latin, holding up what was left of his loaf. "Panem."

"Ah, that one I know." Yusuf repeated bread in Arabic. They had eaten all they'd been given by the time they were out of sight of the small town. He assumed the contents of the jug were supposed to be mint tea. It was sweetened and there were indeed a few mint leaves floating in it like an afterthought, but that was all one could say of it. He passed the jug of sugar water to the Frank and tried not to think about it when he drank after the man later. It was a necessity of travel. At least for the time being they had their bellies full. "I don't want to travel all night," Yusuf declared when they were well away from the town. "Let us stop over there where those three palm trees are."

"Three."

Yusuf's head jerked around. "Yes, three! You caught that word in among the rest, did you? Good for you."

"Good."

Yusuf side-eyed him, thinking back through all the words they'd exchanged that day. 'Good' had not been among them, but he'd said it often enough. "Yes, good."

"Good." They settled under the trees, finding the ground softer here than the stony hilltop the night before. They brushed aside the fallen palm leaves to clear spots large enough to lie down. Nicolò said, "Sleep? Watch?"

Yusuf sighed and looked up and down the road as best he could see. He didn't know where they were going or even why they were continuing this way, except that the first civilized town they'd come to sensibly wanted nothing to do with them. He was too tired to deal with it, both spiritually, given his uncertainty of what to do or where they were going, and physically in that he'd slept very little the night before and marched an entire day with nothing but a couple half-sized loaves to eat. "Do you think we need to watch?"

Nicolò was quiet for a long pause, then said, "No. Sleep."

"Good. I was-" Yusuf stopped, tossing aside a stone from his resting spot. "You understood what I said."

Nicolò was already lying down, curling on his side as he had the night before, facing Yusuf. "Sleep?"

"You understood what I said," Yusuf insisted, wondering to what degree he'd been underestimating the man's understanding.

"No Arabic," he said sulkily.

Yusuf didn't buy that for an instant. "You lying bastard."

Between strangers, those were fighting words if they were understood – both the accusation that he was lying and the slur to his family. But Nicolò only looked over at him in the darkness and enunciated with particular care: "No. Arabic." Then: "Sleep. No watch."

Yusuf snorted, but he was amused and impressed at Nicolò telling him off within the limits of his language. "Stupid Frank." His voice was warm, not insulting. He chuckled as he felt across the ground before he laid down, making sure there were no other stones or sticks that would poke him as he slept. The man was a good distraction from Yusuf's many other concerns.

"No Frank. Genoese. From Genova … I Genoese."

"I see you're not arguing the part about being stupid." Nicolò didn't answer, nor did he turn his head toward him in the inquisitive manner of someone who didn't know what had been said. Yusuf smirked and laid down on his back. If he were right about what Nicolò understood, then he was a more patient and humble man than Yusuf had so far given him credit.

Minutes passed. Staring up at the dark palm leaves against the darker sky, Yusuf thought about the distinction. He'd assumed Genova was a city or district within the larger Frankish empire, assuming the Franks had an empire. He didn't know. His family didn't trade outside of Muslim lands – it was a long way from Cairo (or Mahdia), it was dangerous, and non-Muslims tended to be a bunch of barbarians these days. Or so he'd been told.

Curious, Yusuf asked, "Genoese people are not Franks?" Nicolò made a noise but said nothing. Yusuf said, "You can't pretend you don't understand me. Are Genoese men not Franks?"

Nicolò took a moment to put the words together. "Genoese men are? Are no … not Franks."

"Huh." He thought about his own identity as a Maghrebi instead of one of the Fatimids or Turks or the locals. He wondered if the Genoese/Frank difference was something a person would notice if they knew what to look for, the same as most could see he himself wasn't from these parts. "Is it insulting that I call you a Frank?" Nicolò didn't answer. Yusuf went on, "'Stupid Genoese' doesn't roll off the tongue as well. I'll have to think of something else to call you. Maybe just ugly bastard. Do you know what ugly bastard means?"

He knew he was toeing the line between friendly teasing and mortal insults. He definitely had no right to friendship, which meant there was only one reasonable way Nicolò could interpret Yusuf's words. When Nicolò propped himself up on his side facing Yusuf, Yusuf felt his heart beat faster and his hand found the hilt of the scimitar he still had at his waist. He didn't want to use it. He regretted his words if they were going to lead to fighting. Nicolò stared in his direction. Yusuf didn't breathe. It was too dark to read the man's expression, but there was no sword in his hand. After a long pause, Nicolò said as sternly as though it were a command, "Peace."

"Peace," Yusuf repeated. He started breathing again and released his weapon. His sass had gotten him into trouble before, but it seemed he was not in trouble now. Maybe the opposite.

"Peace," Nicolò said again in a less disagreeable tone as he laid back down. "Sleep."

"Sleep," Yusuf agreed. He was smiling when he shut his eyes.


	4. Pressing Service

The next day, they saw a military unit coming down the road from the east, coming from the larger city of Amman, he assumed (as Amman, supposedly the capital of Balqa, was somewhere in this direction). They constituted two mounted men and more than a score on foot. Nicolò got well off the road without Yusuf having to say anything. These were his enemies much more than some gate guard in Shuna – armed, armored, and doubtless marching to find and kill people like himself. Yusuf followed him, but they'd been seen.

One of the mounted men called out, "You there! Come here." Yusuf came forward, doing his best to look like a law-abiding citizen who wanted no trouble. It was a hard sell given that he'd tried to hide and was wearing armor, carrying a scimitar, and accompanied by a Frank (or Genoese – whatever). "Both of you," the man clarified.

Yusuf gestured at Nicolò, who came up slowly. His hand was on the pommel of his sword.

The riders were older men with greying beards and fine clothing. The nearer bore a scar across his jaw that even his beard could not hide. He said, "I am Hilal ibn Omar ibn Said ibn al-Nu'man, Amir of Yarqa, here to defend our neighbor of Jericho from the depredations of foreigners." His eyes lingered on Nicolò, then shifted back to Yusuf. "Identify yourselves."

"I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Al-Kaysani, called the Maghrebi in these parts. I was a soldier in Jerusalem and then in Jericho. This is Nicolò." He hesitated. He had to come up with a believable story, because 'we're both unkillable and just traveling together while we figure out how to talk to each other and then decide what this blessing means' wasn't going to pass muster. "He is a defected invader in my service."

"What is he, a slave?" Hilal asked.

The other rider said, "With a sword and chain mail?"

"With respect, he is guarding me," Yusuf said. "He is in my employ as a mercenary."

"Let him speak for himself," the other rider said, bringing his horse around a few steps so he faced them. The two riders and Yusuf looked at Nicolò, who said nothing.

The first rider, the Amir Hilal al-Nu'man, made an exasperated sound. "You. Niklo? Do you work for him?"

Yusuf chewed his lip. Nicolò looked at him. Yusuf gave the smallest nod he thought he could get away with. Nicolò said, "Yes."

"Are you a slave?" said the other rider.

This time Nicolò didn't look at Yusuf. "No." His hand slipped down to the grip of his sword.

So did the other man's, but Hilal only laughed. The amir said to the other rider, "I think you insult him."

The other rider let his hand fall away from his weapon. "Maybe so," he allowed. "Where are you going?" This he directed at Yusuf after giving Nicolò the stink eye.

"We are looking for shelter to rest for a few days, and then we will turn south so I can see about rejoining the Fatimids." To say this was his plan was an exaggeration. He didn't have a plan yet, but he provided one anyway lest they be mistaken for bandits or outlaws. He also wasn't technically part of the Fatimids; he'd only traveled with them … it was more complicated than he wanted to explain to these two.

"And him with you?" asked Hilal. "Is he a convert to Islam?"

"Not yet," Yusuf said. "Insha'Allah, he shall be." That would be nice, but Yusuf had no intention of attempting to convert anyone. It was polite to say, though, and maybe it would gain Nicolò some leeway.

"Insha'Allah," Hilal agreed. He looked at Nicolò. "You will fight against the invaders, your own people?"

Nicolò cleared his throat, glancing nervously at Yusuf before looking back to the amir. "Insha'Allah?" He had to know what he was saying – God willing – the phrase was ubiquitous. The uncertainty was probably that he wasn't sure what he was agreeing to.

Yusuf said, "He does not know much Arabic, but he has already fought against the invaders. We escorted refugees from Jericho together, before it burned." This at least was unquestionably true.

Hilal nodded. "So you say. You will come with us to help take it back. Fall in."

Yusuf sighed, but this was not a bad outcome, all things considered. His stomach rumbled. He gestured at Nicolò. "Come. We are soldiers now, again. At least they will probably feed us."

* * *

They did feed them. Mutton stew, in fact, which was far tastier than he would have expected given the weak tea and stale bread, as they'd ended their day's march right back in the same town of Shuna they'd been denied entry to the day before. The stew was accompanied by fresh bread this time, served in the guard barracks.

Yusuf and Nicolò both wolfed the meal down, then sat idle, sipping at the slightly-better-excuse-for-over-sweetened-mint-tea they had as drinks. This time it had the flavor of mint and no floating leaves. Yusuf saw Hilal (the scarred greybeard) have a quiet conversation with a man in the town's guard uniform. It looked like the one he'd spoken to the day before at the gate. They kept looking toward Yusuf and Nicolò. Yep, that was the same guy.

Yusuf worried over what they would do about his association with an invader, or if they would find some untruth he'd uttered. There were criminal penalties for lying and severe ones for consorting with the enemy. What would they do if they found they couldn't execute him? Would they cut off his head? Stack stones on him and leave him crushed under them in miserable heat until the vitality left him? If God was not behind his healing, then he was sure there was a way to kill him and he just hadn't been so unlucky as to find it yet.

Hilal walked down to the spot on the trestle table where Yusuf and Nicolò were eating. He addressed Yusuf. "The head of the watch confirms he saw you last night. You took bread and left in peace. There was a wagon you were following. They attest you were not bandits and gave them no trouble. This speaks well of you."

"Good," Yusuf said, setting down his cup. "I am pleased to hear this." But he was sure the man hadn't walked over to compliment him.

"Your armor, though, is very rough. It looks like something taken from the dead, although it fits you well and I can't see why your companion would take from a Frank and go about with his face uncovered, especially during times like these."

The man was declining to believe Yusuf's explanation for who they were and why they were here. He was _not quite_ accusing them of being scavengers and thieves, but it was close. "Yes," Yusuf said, laughing lightly to brush off the offense, "sometimes I think he intends to demoralize all of us with his hideous features." He was very aware of being in a hall with a double score of armed fighting men and guards, and he was a stranger, nearly as much a foreigner as Nicolò, to all of them.

Hilal gave Nicolò a long, steady look, which Nicolò returned just as steadily, his face set like it was chiseled in stone. Yusuf cleared his throat, hoping to break the tension. "The armor and weapons are ours. We have fought in them. The battle scars are well-earned."

The amir turned to him. "The damage to the plate there over your heart looks like you were run through and killed."

Yusuf chuckled nervously, touching the spot without looking. "Well, obviously not. I'm fine." That was where he'd been speared when the invaders stormed over Jericho's tumbled walls.

"Let me see that scimitar you carry."

"Right now?"

"Yes."

Yusuf rose, moving a few steps back while he glanced around the room. He was not keen to hand over his weapon not knowing why it was being asked for or if he could get it back. It didn't have any sentimental value – he'd snatched it out of the mud when he'd revived after his first battle, surrounded by the dead and dying. He'd only realized later it wasn't the one he'd bought (and been ripped off for – it was poor quality steel and wouldn't hold an edge; he was glad to have lost it) before he joined the defense. This one was good steel, for one thing.

He worried it had some identifying feature he was too inexperienced in weapons to have noticed. He began to draw it. As he did, Nicolò leaped up, whipped out his own sword, leveled it at the amir, and had even put a foot on his seat as though to launch himself over the table at the man. Yusuf yelped, "No, no! You crazy Frank! Peace! Peace."

Hilal, for his part, was a braver man than most. Unfazed, he looked down the length of Nicolò's unwavering sword and said, "This weapon has seen action. It is damaged in several places." He turned to Yusuf, dismissing Nicolò's threat. "Now yours?"

"Nicolò? Peace." He made calming motions, not sure how Nicolò had misread the situation so badly. Then he realized – he hadn't. They were in a very tense situation. Yusuf himself was telegraphing this and with Nicolò having an imprecise mastery of the language … what was most remarkable was that Nicolò had jumped up to defend him, especially as it was a fight he obviously wouldn't win. Yusuf was both pleased and surprised by this. "It's good," he said, repeating his motions.

Nicolò stepped back, looking down the table at nearly forty startled troops and guards, none of whom would have been fast enough to save the amir had Nicolò continued. He sheathed his weapon. Yusuf finished drawing his and handed it over.

Hilal gave the scimitar a brief examination. "This, too, has struck armor and bone."

"Yes. We have not had a proper whetstone to repair them."

"Where did you get it? Did it come with the armor?" Again with the snide implication he'd stolen it.

Stiffly, Yusuf said, "I was lent it outside the north gate of Jerusalem, when I went out in a sally to sabotage the construction of a siege tower. Which we were successful at, I must say, and delayed the taking of the city by a week. I do not know the man who lent it to me. No one else survived our mission but myself. You may ask that of the Fatimid sub-commander Al-Dawla, should you be able to find him.

"There were many others on the walls who saw my conduct and can vouch for it." Fortunately, they'd been far enough away not to realize he'd actually died out there along with the rest of the suicide force. With a hint of anger in his voice, Yusuf added, "I do not know the provenance of Nicolò's gear. I have not demanded he provide me with _receipts_."

The amir offered the scimitar back. Yusuf took it and sheathed it. Hilal asked, "So you can use that?"

"Why would I be carrying such a thing if I could not? Why would I wear this stinking, heavy armor? It invites trouble from everyone! But these are the only possessions we have. Would you have us go naked or in the rags of our tabards and gambesons?" The amir looked amused at his outburst, or maybe the mental image. Yusuf snapped, "Of course I can use it!"

"He should not speak so disrespectfully to you," put in the greybeard who had been riding that day with Hilal.

Hilal waved off the unsolicited comment, but Yusuf took it as the warning it was, that he should not speak so impertinently to his betters. The amir took two practice swords from a rack on the wall, handing one to Yusuf and the other hilt-first across the table to Nicolò. "Show me."

"Here?" Yusuf asked, relaxing somewhat. This was a test he could pass and perhaps put the man's suspicions to rest. The practice swords were thick bats with handles, about the weight of a proper steel blade, but point-heavy. They could deliver a wicked smack, but they would not slash or puncture. Yusuf had spent much of the last two months drilling with a weapon like this to improve his swordsmanship. He could not easily kill Nicolò with this, nor Nicolò him.

Hilal indicated the open space on the opposite side of the table. "Light sparring. To first touch."

Yusuf wasn't sure how to convey that to Nicolò and it didn't matter anyway. All they needed to do was a few easy maneuvers of block and parry and they'd be done. He moved to the opposite side. Nicolò was testing the balance of his weapon. Yusuf gestured at the wall to his left. "No." He indicated the table to his right. "No." He waved his hand back and forth between them. "Yes."

"Yes men sword," Nicolò said. "No peace."

"Yes, I suppose so." Not that he knew what Nicolò meant by that. In retrospect, he would realize it translated to, 'We are men with swords who are going to fight', also known as, 'I'm going to kick your ass'. But at that point, to Yusuf, it was just meaningless words.

Yusuf moved forward and made a jab. The tip of Nicolò's weapon dipped just enough for him to drop it under Yusuf's blade and come back up on the opposite side to knock it off-line. He regained his guard and tried again, same thing. All they need do here was make it look good and they could sit down again. Yusuf had only trained for a few months, but he'd survived several real clashes and gained a level-headedness that was worth more than a year of drills.

Even so, Nicolò's blade locked with his, then twisted around it in a tighter version of the dip-and-knock, evading his attempt to block it and whacking him soundly on the head once it was free. That should have been it – a loss for Yusuf and a prick to his pride, but a clear demonstration that they knew how to use their weapons like professionals. Yet Nicolò did not stop there. He knocked Yusuf's weapon arm out of the way with his other hand and shoved his shoulder into his chest while hooking a foot behind one of Yusuf's heels. Still seeing stars from the head blow, Yusuf stumbled and went down.

Nicolò planted a foot on his chest and pressed hard, forcing the breath from him. The blunt tip of his wooden sword ended a few inches from Yusuf's throat in a showy display of dominance. This wasn't simply a prick to Yusuf's pride. The Frank had taken this too far. Yusuf hadn't even been trying to hurt him and here the man was literally knocking him on his ass and putting his foot on him, treading on him like he was no more than dust beneath his sole?

There was impressed chatter from the table and a few laughs at Yusuf's expense. Yusuf wrested Nicolò's foot from him, batted his sword out of the way, and got to his feet. "No peace, then!" he snapped. "Again!"

Nicolò's eyes were alight. Yusuf played with the sword briefly, trying to get a feel for it and imagining braining Nicolò with it in turn. The Frank seemed to think this was funny (and fun). Yusuf would teach him better. He would not stand to be laughed at in front of a crowd – not by a man he'd killed at least three times, maybe four. From the other side of the table, Hilal said, "I've seen enough."

Yusuf ignored him – this wasn't about getting the amir's respect. It was about getting Nicolò's. Yusuf came forward, faster this time and surer. His sword play was better. He knocked away three different strikes from Nicolò, evading them and forcing the Frank to give ground until he was nearly at the other end of the table. Soldiers turned to watch them as they went. Yusuf ended it with a hard thrust to the solar plexus that would have skewered the Frank through had it been a real sword, chain mail be damned. And there! That was it – he'd beaten him fairly.

Nicolò coughed and touched the spot on his chest. He said something in his own tongue. The tip of his sword twitched as he flexed his grip. It should have been over between them, but Nicolò jumped forward, nearly into Yusuf's blade and taking a hit on the shoulder. Even if this were a third match, by the usual rules that would have counted as a solid enough touch to end the duel.

Nicolò had not been told the rules. He kept swinging and Yusuf found a fire of competitiveness lit within him – he would give as good as he got here. Yusuf clocked him across the face with the hilt of his sword, staggered back from Nicolò's answering shove, and kept his feet to parry an overhand blow of such force that one of their swords made a cracking sound and he was driven back again. Nicolò's nose was bleeding, but Yusuf found that funny rather than appalling – they'd killed each other before, after all. A little nosebleed was nothing. Even getting their skull caved in wouldn't stop either of them for long.

There was a yell to stop from the sidelines. But Yusuf's blood was singing in his veins and he could see the equally exhilarated look on Nicolò's face. Yusuf ignored the command in preference to swinging for Nicolò's leg. He missed and with a swerve to try and salvage the blow, managed to stab him squarely in the groin. He'd been hoping for the gut, but he didn't care too much where he hit as long as it worked. Nicolò stumbled and half-crumpled, but he didn't go down.

There was silence in the room as every man cringed except Yusuf, who knew there was no need for mercy. Yusuf lunged, was sidestepped with a twist of Nicolò's torso, and to his surprise Nicolò's blade swept back hard on his undefended side, knocking him into the table and driving his breath from him. He wouldn't have expected such force from a man in Nicolò's compromised condition, but there it was.

"Stop!" Hilal yelled again from the other side of the table and this time, finally, they listened. Yusuf was gasping, clutching his side under his armpit. There was no metal banding that high and the leather was not as thick there. Nicolò was still struggling to stand up straight, a hand drifting to his groin to rub at it or cup himself. The amir called in outrage, "I said until first touch!"

"Yes," Yusuf allowed with a groan. "I believe you did." He looked over to Nicolò, who gave him an acknowledging nod with a blink, dropping the tip of his practice sword to the floor. He had the man's respect. That was all he'd wanted.

"Are your ribs broken?" the amir asked.

"No, I am fine." He stretched. And he _was_ fine. He felt good, blood pounding, body alive, nothing hurting. Nicolò was laughing now, fully recovered. He wiped the blood from his nose. It had stopped flowing. Yusuf said, "We were not hitting each other very hard. It was all for show."

"You are supposed to be able to fight tomorrow!" Hilal said crossly. "And you, Frank? You must not have balls if you are well after that."

Yusuf chuckled and went around the table. "Oh, he has balls, I can promise you that." Yusuf had seen the man in battle too many times to doubt his courage. He returned his practice sword to the rack.

Nicolò leaned across the table to hand his back to the rider, who added it to the rack as well and then removed Yusuf's. "This is cracked now," Hilal observed. "Those were not light hits."

"It must have been defective," Yusuf said dismissively. He really disliked how much he was having to lie. "We are both fine, as you can see. Are you satisfied that we are honorable men?"

"I am satisfied you can both fight, though your ability to follow orders is questionable." Hilal frowned at the practice sword and threw it in a corner so it wouldn't be used again. "And this after two days of marching with no more food than a few loaves?" Yusuf said nothing. Their stamina was as suspicious as the more overt healing. This man was too observant by far. "Give them another portion," the amir called to the help, returning to the head of the table. "And a whetstone."

Yusuf sat down and waved Nicolò to his seat. An additional bowl was put in front of them and their empty bowls taken away. "A loaf, too, please if you may?" Yusuf asked politely and this, too, was provided to them along with a well-used whetstone.

Nicolò pointed at his full bowl. "What is that?" He said it like it was a single word, but it was clear enough otherwise.

Yusuf stared at him in amused offense. "'What is that'" he repeated the same way Nicolò had said it. "You know how to say, 'what is that' and you have not said it before now?"

"What is that?" Nicolò pointed at the food again, keeping his original, single-word pronunciation.

"It is mutton stew."

"Mutton stew."

"Yes. I noticed you left off the 'it is'. You know perfectly well what I am saying."

Nicolò picked up the bread. "Mutton stew?" He raised his brows hopefully, or maybe he was making a joke.

"No. That is bread. You know that is bread, you fool."

Next to him, one of the soldiers asked, "How long has he been learning Arabic? A few weeks? His pronunciation is good, although he sounds like a Maghrebi."

Yusuf hesitated. It had only been two days. Of course, Nicolò apparently knew some basics before that, but … it had been only _two days_. The man might be stupid enough to stare directly at the sun, but … well, no, on second thought, perhaps Yusuf was the stupid one for doubting the extent of their power. "Ah. About that, yes. His accent is no fault of his. He works very hard on it. He understands more than he can say."

"And you call him a fool?"

Yusuf grinned warmly and shot Nicolò an appreciative look. "He is a very patient man. Very humble and large of character. I have been surprised by him." And he was, truly. He felt a warm, convivial emotion toward the man now that they'd fought without homicide on their minds, proving they could be violent and yet controlled.

The soldier next to him grunted. "I do not want to fight next to a Frank tomorrow. I want to kill them instead." He gestured at Nicolò, who froze, his attention fixed on this conversation.

Yusuf said, "Stay away from this one, or we will both kill you." His tone was light, but it was not a joke.

The soldier looked him over, realizing the threat (or promise), then shrugged. "You both fight well." He went back to his own business, turning to speak to the soldier on the other side of him.

Yusuf looked over to Nicolò, who was relaxing slowly. In a low voice, Yusuf said, "I don't know if you understand this, but we have been pressed into service for the faithful in the defense of the realm. Tomorrow, you will be asked to fight other invaders. For me, this is not a difficulty, as I volunteered to fight in Jerusalem and I volunteer now. These are my people. I will fight and die for them as I must. But they are not _your_ people. I know less of what you desire. Or why you are even with me."

Nicolò studied him. "No Arabic," he finally said.

Yusuf sighed. "Yes, that is complex. Let me think. Now, we have dies and noctis, right, in Latin?" Nicolò nodded. Yusuf went on, "So, 'dies', this day. One day." He held up one finger. "'Noctis', this night. One night. We sleep. Tomorrow is two day. The second day." Two fingers. "Sleep, then day. That is tomorrow. Do you understand?"

Nicolò raised his brows slightly, looking like he had no idea what Yusuf was blathering on about.

"That looks like a maybe," Yusuf said, even though it didn't. "Okay, that is tomorrow. We sleep, then day. Okay?" Nicolò nodded shallowly like he was just barely following his meaning. Yusuf continued, gesturing to the various soldiers in the room. He could see a few of them were watching this exchange with interest, having fallen silent to better hear his low voice. "Tomorrow. All of us. Fight. No peace. Swords."

"Yes men?" Nicolò mimed stabbing the man to his left. That man looked alarmed and offended with a 'what the hell, dude?' expression, but stayed out of the conversation.

"No," Yusuf said. He shook his head emphatically. "Peace between us. All of us." He indicated the people in the room again. "We fight _other_ people. We fight _Franks_. Tomorrow."

"Franks. Tomorrow." 'Tomorrow' was mangled, but Yusuf let it be.

"No peace with Franks," Yusuf told him.

Nicolò sighed and leaned back. His face turned distressed. He didn't say anything for a time, gazing steadily at Yusuf the whole while. Finally, his expression cleared and he said, "Sleep?"

"Yes," Yusuf told him. Nicolò stood. Yusuf leaned forward to add, "Nicolò? Will you fight with me tomorrow? I must know if you understand." He was asking a great deal of him. It was one thing to strike down rapists on the verge of a war crime. It was another to knowingly march against your own people to advance the military objectives of your enemy. The first was human decency. The second was unquestionably treason. Yusuf didn't want this decision made through a miscommunication.

"No peace with Franks," Nicolò said after a pause. "No Jerusalem." Nicolò had eyes. He knew why a group of armed faithful were retracing their steps back to Jericho, and he was marching with them. It was time to sharpen his sword. He picked up the whetstone. He understood.

"Thank you, my friend," Yusuf said, his voice soft. There was no coin in this for Nicolò. There was no renown or advantage. The only benefit was in doing the right thing and although Yusuf himself had volunteered to defend Jerusalem (a city which was not his home nor even especially friendly to him) for that same reason, he'd not expected to run into anyone else willing to do the same. Especially not among the invaders. "You do not cease to astound me. It may be that I do not deserve you."

Nicolò went off to look at the bunks at the other end of the room. He sat on one and drew out his sword to see what could be done for it. Yusuf gathered their bowls and cups, taking them to the front. He was lost in thought about the true meaning of 'honor' when the amir said, "He does not work for you."

Yusuf dropped off their bowls and cups. The amir annoyingly kept picking at his lies. "He agreed," he countered, keeping up the charade that Nicolò was a mercenary, even though the truth was there was not a thing mercenary about him. "He is working for me."

"You don't command him."

"I do not need to," Yusuf said, raising his chin. "His conscience commands him. God commands him. So should it be with all of us, if we were better men."

The amir nodded slowly. "This is true." He took a sip of his tea. "This is very true. The bunks are for the guards and officers. You, he, and these men will sleep on the floor."

"I will tell him," Yusuf said, heading back to where Nicolò had sat himself on a bunk to sharpen his sword.


	5. Rock and a Hard Place

In the morning, Nicolò was given a new green tabard to wear to indicate his membership in the group and hopefully prevent him from being mistaken as an enemy. It matched Yusuf's. Nicolò rolled up his existing white one, ragged and stained as it was, and tied it to his back. The one Yusuf had been given in Jericho was deemed suitable, even as ragged and unwashed as it was. He was not the only one in the group wearing that uniform.

They marched to Jericho, leaving early and continuing a miserably hot march through the heat of the day to ensure they would arrive before sunset. The Franks were sacking the town, or rather, they were sacking it _again_ , as they had returned to take whatever hadn't burned the first time. They had not been long at it, either.

The amir's group was not the only one of the faithful mustered from the surrounding countryside. Altogether, they were a formidable force. Most of the Franks fled as soon as they were sighted. They carried away what they could as they went. By the time the faithful reached the breached walls, there were only a few handfuls of invaders left within – either greedy or inattentive.

The amir sent them within the city in squads of ten under the command of sub-leaders, while he and his mounted companion rode out to harass the invaders who were fleeing back toward Jerusalem.

Their first encounter with the enemy was right within the gate. It was a wagon being pulled by a skittish mule that had never known harness and an inept, over-grasping driver who had thought he could manage the animal with enough lashes of the whip. He tried to goad the mule into charging them so as to run them down with beast and wagon, but it balked and fought, coming up on its hind legs and squalling as he struck it with the whip.

Nicolò called out something in whatever Frankish tongue he spoke. The man seemed to recognize it and stopped beating the poor mule. He answered. Nicolò said more. The man dropped the whip and put his hands up in surrender.

Yusuf had come up on one side of the wagon. Nicolò was on the other. The rest of their group followed Yusuf or had by now taken the mule's head, leaving Nicolò to himself on the far side. The driver began to dismount in Nicolò's direction. One of the more spritely on Yusuf's side jumped onto the buckboard and jerked the man the other way. He didn't resist. He was pulled down on Yusuf's side and summarily executed.

"Ayiee," Yusuf complained with a grimace, but it was too late to do anything. He hadn't understood the words, but he was fairly sure Nicolò had asked for an honorable surrender. He may even have made promises about the man's safety. Yusuf didn't feel bad on account of some invader trying to make off with a cart full of loot, but he did regret that Nicolò had been forced into dishonor. He looked up to see Nicolò had leaned to the side a little to see the Frank now bleeding out and twitching on the ground. His face hardened and he looked away. Yusuf grimaced again.

But it was war. They both knew this. Nicolò continued steadfastly with their patrol of the city, although he did not attempt to speak to the Franks again. There were fewer bodies of the faithful than Yusuf had feared to find. There had been no massacre like Jerusalem or Ma'arra; the Franks had not yet sent a force large enough to hold the city, much less surround it and butcher everyone inside. So far, they were only robbing it and killing anyone who got in the way.

Shortly after dark, they pursued what seemed to be the last of the invaders, chasing a pair into a dead end. The fleeing men realized their mistake and turned. One fired a crossbow, killing the man in front of Yusuf, the bolt traveling with such force that it punched half its length out the man's back. Yusuf and the rest of the faithful took cover at the start of the alley. Nicolò, who had been at the rear of the group, skipped forward one step and whacked Yusuf on the shoulder. "Run! Run!" he said in Latin, and then charged forward.

Yusuf knew what that meant – 'run _with_ me' and _not_ 'run away'. But to run into the sights of men who were firing those bolts down a straight alley? They couldn't possibly miss. It was suicide. Why? Weren't there other choices? Shouldn't they at least pause to consider them? But Nicolò was already running and then Yusuf, with a stab of fear and the pounding of his heart, was following. He trusted Nicolò knew what he was doing.

Yusuf expected to be hit with every stride. Even if he would rise again, it was still death. The lighting was poor, but he could see one of the two invaders setting his spear to receive Nicolò's charge. Behind that man the arbalist was doing something, but what he wasn't doing was taking his shot. Maybe they would make it in time? Maybe this was what Nicolò had known – there was a reload time, a space when it was safe to rush them. But then the arbalist had his weapon up and neither of them had so much as a shield (not that such would have done any good). This was no shot at range from the walls of Jericho. At this distance, a perfect aim might kill both of them.

The crossbowman didn't have perfect aim. He was panicked and fired the moment his weapon was pointed generally in their direction. Nicolò had jumped to the side, putting the spearman between him and the crossbowman. The bolt missed the spearman (and Nicolò) by less than a handspan and Yusuf by a similar distance. It clattered off the brick behind him as the arbalist cursed. Nicolò knocked the tip of the spear aside with a practiced move and darted by him, presenting his back as a perfect target.

The spearman wheeled, following Nicolò and whipping around his weapon to skewer his target. Yusuf knew that sort of tunnel vision. He slashed the spearman across the face before he could stab Nicolò. The man stumbled back and Yusuf turned his next blow into a jab, again to the face, because the damned chain mail the invaders wore made other targets unreliable unless you were in a position to put a lot of force behind it. The face was an exceptionally difficult target unless your ally had conveniently distracted him, as Nicolò had done.

The man fell to the ground, dead almost as soon as Yusuf withdrew his scimitar. Nicolò had done for the arbalist in the meantime. Yusuf panted, looking around. They'd done it – they'd fought side by side, together. It was thrilling, vindicating. Nicolò had expected him to deal with the spearman, he realized. He'd trusted him to guard his back – and he'd been right. Yusuf stood straighter and called back to the others, "Aye! They are dead!" At this, the rest of the squad came forward cautiously.

Nicolò picked up the crossbow, examining it briefly and was taking the quiver from the dead man when the rest of their patrol reached them. The man who was in charge at this point was the one who had said he wanted to kill Franks instead of fight next to them. Yusuf hadn't caught his name. The man spoke now, his voice sharp. "Hey there. Looting Frank! What are you doing? That is not yours."

Nicolò looked up at him in the light of the two torches the group carried. His face was blank.

The accusation was uncalled for and the timing was low. It wasn't lost on Yusuf that these were likely the last two enemies in the city, meaning they no longer had need of Nicolò's services as a fighter. Yusuf tried to negotiate. "There were no crossbows in this city when it was taken. That is a Frankish weapon. He is not looting."

"It does not matter where it came from! We need fewer weapons in the hands of Franks," the man said, walking forward and bending to take the bow from where it lay next to Nicolò's feet. He didn't make it. Nicolò moved and the man jerked upward, Nicolò's hand on his sword arm. The Genoese's other hand was occupied by a dagger that was now pointed under the man's chin.

Yusuf hissed but said nothing. So far there was no harm done – just a bruised ego. The situation was recoverable if everyone would just stay calm. The others had stopped, staring and waiting to see the resolution. Nicolò looked over to Yusuf and opened his mouth. Whatever he was going to say was overridden by the man he was holding saying, "Get him!" and trying to wrest free while Nicolò's attention appeared to be elsewhere. People scrambled to obey. Swords were raised.

"No, no!" Yusuf said, but it was too late. Nicolò stabbed the man right in the throat. Blood sprayed and it was seven against one with Yusuf undecided. It crossed Yusuf's mind that he didn't need to fight on Nicolò's side. He didn't even need to fight – just let them cut down Nicolò, see them on their way, and the dead man would stand back up no worse. They could all walk away from this alive, but that fragile trust that lived between he and Nicolò would be irrevocably broken. Yusuf had only a split second to take sides, but take sides he did.

Yusuf lashed out with his sword, taking the nearest man in the gut. Now it was six to two. Two others leapt at Nicolò, one stabbing him, the other ending on his dagger. Five to two. Yusuf sliced down another of the faithful who was holding the torch (and nothing else, which didn't make a lot of sense, but Yusuf took advantage of it anyway – maybe he'd thought he didn't need it moments earlier when there had been no living foes). Four to two.

Yusuf was stabbed through the shoulder and then the chest as he lost his winning momentum. He shoved forward against the blade still within him and swung downward at the man's head, ignoring his own supposedly mortal wounds. Three to two. Weakness shot through him and he staggered to the wall, bracing himself as death tried to claim him. There was a clatter next to him as Nicolò pulled a sword out of himself and threw it on the ground. The two before Yusuf ran back a short distance, one of them holding a torch and sword, the other a cudgel. They stopped and reassured one another that both Yusuf and Nicolò would bleed out and die in a moment.

He yanked the weapon out of his chest and turned to find the last foe dying messily on the ground to Nicolò's left. Yusuf spat blood, but it was a passing thing. He was already feeling stronger as his wounds knit together. He felt pity for the men who stood before them, not knowing they were facing men who couldn't die. He felt more for those on the ground (aside from their leader, who'd deserved it) who'd died so needlessly, following bad orders and prejudice.

Nicolò bent and retrieved the crossbow, loading it methodically like a man who'd used such a weapon many times. The two down the street exchanged worried words. They fled in terror when Nicolò raised the weapon. He did not fire, which Yusuf saw as mercy undeserved but mercy nonetheless. Were their roles reversed, he suspected he would have put a bolt through one of them out of anger and vindictiveness at having been put through such a stupid fight.

Yusuf passions cooled as he looked around at the dead. He was glad he hadn't known them better, but they were dead regardless. "This is an unfortunate turn of events," he said, his voice hollow and cracking around the words. He'd definitely switched sides, but if he were honest with himself, he wasn't sure which side he'd switched to. It wasn't the Frank's. It had to be Nicolò's. But no one would care about such a fine point. They'd see him as a Judas, an irredeemable traitor.

The torch that had been dropped sputtered and went out, leaving them in darkness. "No peace," Nicolò said, gesturing at the bodies.

"No," Yusuf agreed. "No peace." He'd killed his own people. There was no coming back from this. He was an outlaw, or he would be, as soon as the two who'd fled told their tale. As the reality of the situation sank in, it felt like the ground dropped out from under him. He hadn't realized how much worse things could get. He was as lost as Nicolò now. He had done everything for the right reasons, but his honor was ruined anyway. He might as well be some monster like the Franks.

Where could he go now? He'd lost his father's money when he'd abandoned his mercantile mission and joined Jerusalem's defense force, spending his profits to buy overpriced armor and a bad sword. Now he'd betrayed the people he'd joined on behalf of one of the invaders! He stared at the indistinguishable lumps in the darkness – the bodies – thinking about how he'd only been defending a friend. And before that Nicolò had only been defending himself. It was obvious the leader had intended to get rid of the Frank once he had no more need of him and the last of the invaders were dead so they _had_ no need of him and-

Nicolò turned to him. " _Thank you_ ," he said gratefully. He set down the crossbow and reached for him gingerly. Yusuf was still leaning on the wall, unmoving, eyes distant.

Nicolò pulled him close and embraced him with another, " _Thank you_." -and they'd been going to kill this man. And Yusuf had stopped it. If that damned him, then it damned him. For if there was a God anywhere in this world, then He resided not in healing or prayer, but in the embrace of another. Yusuf put his arms around Nicolò in turn. Nicolò was a solidly muscular man under the chain armor. His grip was firm and constant, leaning into him a little. Yusuf held him in return. He found himself breathing harder and then weeping in a sudden, fitful burst. For a little while, there was quiet in the alley aside from Yusuf snuffling a few times.

Yusuf parted finally and said, "We need to get out of here. Those two will be back with others."

Nicolò said in Latin, "Run?"

Yusuf laughed hollowly. "Yes, my friend. Again, we must 'run'." They had each betrayed their people here and each, ironically, while trying to do right. Nicolò swept up the crossbow and quiver, then took the dead crossbowman's entire belt with pouches as well. He handed it to Yusuf as they moved away.

"Ah," Yusuf said as he realized what he'd been given. Whatever the dead Frank had in his pouches was probably stolen from here or Jerusalem. It was heavy. Taking his weapon was fine; this … less so. But it was already in his hand and he'd just killed three of the faithful anyway. Was this how all outcasts got started – one sin and then another, with every one of them seeming to be the right thing at the time? "May God forgive me when no other will." He slung it over his shoulder.

They escaped the city the same way they had earlier with the woman and children. This time, there was no one to shoot at them from the walls. Nicolò looked to him as though it was up to Yusuf to choose a direction, so he steered them north, over low walls and fences, toward distant hills and away from well-traveled roads and the way they'd come. He wasn't sure it was the right choice, but it was _a_ choice and they couldn't linger in the area without risking being found. It was a hard night, as they did not stop. They ignored their exhaustion and though they tripped and stumbled often in the dark, they recovered quickly.

By the time first light came, they were in the hills west of Pheselch, although Yusuf did not know the town's name yet. The land was becoming rough with steep valleys and high ridges. The dawn showed them that ahead were higher mountains that Yusuf had never had to deal with in his trips up the coast. He vaguely remembered seeing what might have been another side of them, but he had no idea how to get around them.

"Mountains," he said, stopping at the bottom of a ravine to look up at them.

"Rock," Nicolò said, gesturing at the landforms ahead of them. "Big rock. Many. Many rock." He gave Yusuf a skeptical look, as if to say, 'Are we really going that way? Don't you see the rocks?'

" _Mountains_ ," Yusuf said again.

"Mountains," Nicolò repeated. He kept the same expression of skepticism. "Yes?" He gestured again at the enormous barrier to their progress.

Yusuf sighed. He was tired. And depressed he'd made a wrong decision. They should have headed south. At the time, he'd thought north would put them closer to territory where Nicolò could blend in. "No," he answered. Nicolò looked relieved. Yusuf asked, "Sleep?"

"Sleep," Nicolò said with a nod as his posture relaxed. They sought shelter under some shrubby athel trees, looking mainly for the opportunity to be hidden from casual sight. The shade was a nice touch. They both shed their armor and rolled up their tabards to use as pillows.


	6. Counting Stars

They slept through the first half of the day, with Yusuf waking when he heard Nicolò crawling out from beneath the tree sometime after noon. Yusuf followed him. There were some goats on a slope to the east at the edge of vision. Near them would be a goatherd. "Water," Nicolò said to him and Yusuf nodded. They followed the land downhill to a thin trickle of a stream only a handspan deep and no wider than they could jump. But it was flowing and clear. They slaked their thirst.

Yusuf began to disrobe. He gestured at the water. "We should clean ourselves while we have the chance. We are hardly men this way, and certainly not civilized ones."

"Eh?"

He continued undressing. "I'm saying you stink so bad they could track us by scent alone were they so inclined. Your face is made even worse by the spray of blood on it from last night, which is now smeared and disgusting for even a hardened man such as myself to look upon. You are unclean in seven different ways, an abomination in the eyes of God, and a burr to my conscience just to be near you!" He was joking, but his delivery was stern.

Nicolò cocked his head. "No Arabic." There was a sullen tone to his voice like he knew he wouldn't want Yusuf's words translated even if he could.

"Right. Of course, habibi," Yusuf carried on sarcastically, laying the teasing on a little thicker because it seemed Nicolò had missed his tone. "I know this is a strange concept to you and something you likely have no frame of reference for, but please listen. I will demonstrate." By now, he'd already washed his mouth and hands. He took up a double handful of water. "Water."

"Yes." Nicolò looked fetchingly uncertain and although it was probably about Yusuf's tone, it was amusing to think of it as being about the idea of washing.

Yusuf poured it over his own head so it soaked to his scalp and ran down both the back of his head and over his face. "Three times." He repeated the process twice more. Then he scrubbed with his hands, starting with his hair and working his way down, adding more water as needed. "You can do it," he said encouragingly. "I have faith in you."

Nicolò frowned at him, brows drawn together. He looked insulted and confused, but not too seriously. He grumbled, "No Arabic," again, but he did at least begin taking his clothes off.

Yusuf grinned toothily. "You will be a better man at the end of it! Or at least easier to travel with."

Nicolò made himself naked and went about a slightly different cleansing routine, beginning with his face, neck, and chest, which was fine because he looked awful, although Yusuf hoped he would do something about his nasty hair as well. Between the blood, gore, sweat, and dust, they were both repellant. Yusuf went on with his own process. This was not wudu – he had no intention of attempting prayer under these conditions or in the tattered, bloody clothing he had. He was just washing, but they definitely both needed it.

He glanced over at his companion, noticing that his penis was a consistent tube, just an undifferentiated fleshy cylinder hanging from a nest of brown curls. For a moment, he wondered if the man had been maimed at some point or had not properly recovered from Yusuf jabbing him with the practice sword, but then he remembered – foreigners had sheaths like animals. He'd heard it described, yet it had still taken him by surprise to see an adult man who was uncut. He was like a huge baby.

Nicolò's hand came into view. He waved at his penis. "Good?" There was something smug in his tone.

Embarrassed, Yusuf jerked his eyes up. He'd been caught staring. "Ah … Yes. Good. Fine. Yes. I'm sure … Good." He turned away and sorted through his clothing, talking about it nervously. "There's so much blood on everything! I don't want to wash it all because the day is mostly over and we'll still be wet into the night. It would make it very unpleasant to sleep in."

Nicolò said nothing and went back to his hand-bathing. Yusuf snuck a few furtive glances to see Nicolò's demeanor. He was exasperated to find there was nothing to tell – Nicolò had no special expression as he washed his armpits and minded his own business, unlike Yusuf who had to jerk his attention elsewhere lest he be caught again. He wasn't even sure why he was looking. It wasn't like he was interested, right? Just moments ago, he'd been complaining about Nicolò's stench and staring at the relative deformity of his sex! Surely there was nothing there he needed to see.

He focused on washing his small clothes and undertunic, wringing them out as much as possible before putting them back on. The day was hot and they were thin fabric. They should dry quickly and they'd been the worst off of his clothing anyway. It felt good to be cleaner and somewhat rested, even if he was yet again starving with hunger. Nicolò did the same, also washing the green tabard that had been spattered during their last fight. He put on the old Genoese one while the green one hung to dry.

Nicolò moved up to a ridge overlooking the stream. He took the crossbow and made some adjustments to it. Yusuf came over to sit near, watching him. He'd never seen a crossbow up close – only in diagrams and poor renderings. They exchanged words for the parts of the weapon. Since Yusuf did not know the Arabic equivalents (if there were any), he ended up learning most of them in Nicolò's language, which Nicolò politely identified as Ligurian and not 'Frankish'.

It felt surreal after the recent events. He could almost forget he'd killed three of his own people the night before, there was a war going on, and this man had been his sworn enemy a few days ago. Now he was an interesting companion who'd held Yusuf while he cried and looked to him for guidance and who was teaching him something new. Nicolò's presence was steady and calming. It was easy for Yusuf to let go of his worries while they sat together and watched the day wind down.

It was nearing dusk when a hare came into sight. Yusuf's stomach rumbled immediately and he straightened. Nicolò put a hand on his thigh and made a shushing sound. He picked up the crossbow and cranked the weapon slowly. The hare knew they were there, but they were far enough away that it wasn't panicked to see them. Yusuf held very still, thinking of nothing but stew and kebabs and fried meat. Nicolò loaded a bolt, brought the machine to his shoulder, waited a while, and finally pulled the trigger. The dart shot through the animal's midsection, passing through it entirely. It managed to run off some distance despite the wound, but they retrieved it.

Once Yusuf had the animal in hand, the practical considerations occurred to him. "I don't know what we're going to do with this," he said. "I don't have anything to start a fire with. And I cannot say I'm a good cook even if we did." He was hungry, but was he hungry enough to eat an animal raw? He supposed he'd have to.

Nicolò said nothing. They returned to where the majority of their clothing waited. He picked up the belt he'd grabbed last night from the dead Frank and began to rifle through the pouches. He pulled out a small tinderbox and waved it at Yusuf, waggling his brows raised while wearing a mischievous smile on his lips.

"Ah," Yusuf said, a grin lighting up his face in return. "You are a very useful man to have around! Let me have that. You clean this beast." He handed over the dead hare and got a fire going where it couldn't be seen in the direction he'd spotted the goats. Nicolò spitted the carcass and set it up to cook like he knew what he was doing. Yusuf murmured, "Very useful, indeed."

Nicolò fiddled with his crossbow bolt in the fitful light of the fire, a comfortable silence between them. Yusuf watched him more openly than he had to date. Nicolò was not a handsome man, as he'd already noticed. But there was something about him that was easy to look upon, a fascinating play of his features, an intelligent eye and a mildness that should have been out of place on any invader's face. There was a contentedness about him that Yusuf had seen right away and was enjoying now. Either speaking to him or just sitting together, Nicolò was present and attentive, but undemanding.

Yusuf sighed softly and smiled ruefully to himself as he realized the direction of his thoughts. He was coming to realize he was going to have to endure the humiliation of being attracted to this foreigner, because he was fairly sure attraction was what he was feeling. It was warm in his chest, his gut, and his loins. It was also stupid, out of place, and impossible for several reasons.

Especially in exile, it was a preposterous complication to have such feelings for your only companion. It endangered everything between them. He wasn't sure how to kill this feeling and make it go away, not without being an ass and making Nicolò hate him, which was unjust to him. The man had done nothing to deserve being treated badly.

Yusuf separated the rabbit into two pieces and offered them to Nicolò so Nicolò could choose which piece he wanted. Yusuf smothered the fire, then sat back with his own section to eat. It wasn't enough as a meal for either of them, but it was something and he sucked every morsel he could from it. Tomorrow he would go in the direction of the goatherd and get something more substantial to sustain them.

When he was done eating, Nicolò set aside what was left of the bones from his half of the hare. "Black. Night." He waved a hand skyward. "What is that? Small white?"

"You mean the stars?"

"The stars?"

"I happen to know that one in Latin," Yusuf said. "It showed up in my reading a lot. 'Stellae'."

Nicolò nodded. "The stars."

"A star, one star - stella. Two stars; stars, plural - stellae. Many stars." He waved at the sky.

Nicolò nodded again. "Star."

Yusuf sighed as memory washed over him. "They make me think of my home in Cairo, when I would sit out at night with our neighbor, on the roof of his house. He would tell me all the names of the constellations as they were known in Egypt and north. He knew Latin fluently, but since we both spoke Coptic, I never had reason to learn much of it from him. He would read to me the treatises of educated men, translating them as he went. When he was done, we would discuss what was meant. After discussion … well."

He fell silent. He had been Tepio's lover, the last and only time he'd felt a pull toward another like he was feeling now. It pained him. Nicolò looked at him briefly, then back to the stars. Yusuf concluded, "He died a few years ago. I was heart-broken. I took up traveling after that, with my father's wagons."

"Stars."

Yusuf chuckled at how he was speaking of something so wrenching to himself and Nicolò had no idea. He looked over at Nicolò's profile against the night sky. He kept telling himself this was a bad-looking man. Why did it not stick? "Yes. The uncounted stars," he said dreamily, still looking at Nicolò. "The uncountable, without count, countless."

"Count? One, two, three – count?" Nicolò looked over at him.

"Why, yes." Yusuf looked up into the darkness. "That is what it is to count. I don't recall teaching you that one but I must have said it the other day."

"Count … stars." Nicolò resumed star-watching.

"There are too many of them."

Nicolò laid back on the ground, settling in and lacing his fingers behind his head. "One. Two. Three. Four."

"Wait, what?"

"Five. Six. Seven. Eight. None."

"Nine," Yusuf corrected automatically. He'd pronounced it wrong.

"Nine."

"Yes, nine. You have it right now. But why are you counting? Are you seriously going to count the stars? We'll be here all night!"

"Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Sixteen. Seven-"

"No, you left out fifteen. Fifteen. Three fives. Five plus five plus five."

"Fifteen."

"Yes."

"Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen."

"God take mercy on me. I suppose you may as well," he conceded. "We will be here all night anyway. I don't want to go marching through these rough hills in the dark again." Yusuf stretched himself out as well, looking at the star-studded heavens and hoping Nicolò lost interest sooner rather than later.

The counting continued into the hundreds in Nicolò's implacable manner. Occasionally, he skipped a number, which Yusuf was fairly certain was only to see if he was still awake and paying attention. The whole thing started off annoying, turned pleasing, and then became tedious and annoying again as it was clear Nicolò was not stopping at any reasonable point. Finally, Yusuf had had enough. "I will teach you a new word." Nicolò stopped counting. Yusuf said, "I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Here is the word: Silence."

"Silence?"

"Silence."

"Silence."

"Yes. Silence. Now as to what it means …" He put a hand over his own mouth.

Nicolò sat up and looked at him in the dim light. "Silence?" He pointed at his own mouth, then traced his lips. "Mouth? Lips?"

"No. Silence." Yusuf took Nicolò's hand and put it to his own throat, making a faint noise to vibrate his vocal cords. "See? Sound. No sound. Silence." He said no more. He let go of Nicolò's hand. Nicolò's fingertips stroked the front of Yusuf's throat twice, before pulling his hand back.

Nicolò touched his own throat, made a noise, then nothing. Then: "Silence?"

"Yes. It means to be quiet and stop counting. I can't stand it further. You tax me to my limit!" His voice was an irritable snap. He laid down in a huff. This time he hadn't been teasing. (Or, well, he'd like to imagine he was teasing, but it didn't come out that way and even Yusuf knew that.)

Nicolò looked at him for a bit, then laid down as well. He did not speak. The quiet extended between them. It was no longer comfortable, or at least Yusuf was not comfortable as he reviewed what he'd said and the jumbled emotions behind it. He didn't dare speak of the sudden turn in his feelings toward infatuation and his inability to express that left him irritable and frustrated. At Nicolò. Which was wrong.

He reached over for the man's hand. Nicolò jumped a little, but didn't draw away. Awkwardly, Yusuf told him, "I like the sound of your voice. It is one of the few things I like about you, so … you should appreciate it."

"No silence?"

"No. No silence. I like to hear you. I'm fond of it." He was still holding Nicolò's hand. It was strong and wide and calloused and warm, but it did not move within his. Yusuf gave it a small, hopeful squeeze. "My voice was too sharp. I assume too much about what you understand, but you always hear my tone. I'm sorry. I-"

There was so much else he couldn't say of his new feelings. Partly because they were new, partly because he didn't want Nicolò to have to figure out what he meant with his poor grasp of the language, but mostly because it wasn't fair to toss something like this between them at a time like this. How could you discuss the various shades of meaning behind an idiotic crush when your subject didn't even know the word 'like', much less 'love' or anything more nuanced?

Nicolò's hand shifted in Yusuf's as he sat up. He looked down at him, his face cast in darkness. He seemed on the verge of doing or saying something. He squeezed Yusuf's hand lightly in return, an odd movement of his fingers making it more like a caress than a squeeze. "Thank you," he said after a pregnant pause. He laid back down and Yusuf had the definite feeling that wasn't what he'd been intending to say. Or do. Yusuf worried that was just wishful thinking. Nicolò pulled his hand away and rolled onto his side while hugging himself, which seemed his standard position for slumber. "Sleep."

"You know," Yusuf said in a clearly teasing drawl, "you could keep counting if you wanted to. I am sure eventually even you will run out of numbers."

"Silence," Nicolò said grumpily enough that Yusuf had to laugh. Yusuf shut his eyes and let himself fall asleep thinking about Nicolò counting the stars for him. That by itself was sweet enough. It was silly how good that made him feel. The touch to his hand was nice as well, though surely unintentional.


	7. Third Time's the Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Linaxart (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/linaxart).

Yusuf woke in the morning to the sound of steel on stone. He startled, thinking he had only seconds to live, they must be under attack, the goatherd had reported them to someone! He flailed as he tried to remember where he'd put his scimitar – why wasn't it right next to him? Oh yes, he'd been in such a good mood that he'd stripped of armor and weapons to lay comfortably as they watched the stars together. By the time he found it (just out of reach; he had to roll over to get it), he'd realized Nicolò was calmly sitting next to him with his own sword in one hand and a stone in the other.

Yusuf blinked at him, breathing hard, his scimitar loose in his hand as the prickles of adrenaline danced across his skin. There was no one else near. Nicolò rubbed the stone back and forth on his steel a few times with a small smile that was the devil itself in terms of mischief. "Ah!" Yusuf groaned. "You did that on purpose, did you? Or did you just find it funny when I thought I was about to be killed in my sleep?" He sat up and rubbed his face. It was still a strange thought to realize he wouldn't have stayed dead.

Yusuf put his arms on his knees and watched the man. Nicolò went back to sharpening his sword, his face tense as he tried not to smile too much. After a few moments, Yusuf began to chuckle. It _was_ funny and he didn't think Nicolò had done it on purpose. Nicolò let his face relax and a smile peeked out, along with the tip of his tongue as he focused on what he was doing. Yusuf stared at that bit of tongue a little too long before he forced his attention elsewhere. Between them was the belt they'd stolen from the Frank two nights before, with the contents set out.

There was a collection of coins, neatly stacked and sorted by type. The man they'd killed had been rich. It was a lot of money to be set out openly. It had not been divided into two sets, either. Yusuf suspected that said Nicolò thought they would be spending from a common pool, as though they were partners in their future endeavors. He smiled softly, charmed that someone who had put a sword through him last week would be so generous.

It was enough money that even half of it would allow him to return to his family's trading house in Cairo and cover the trade goods he'd taken to Jerusalem to sell. He'd passed up the opportunity to return home safe and rich so he could stay and repel the invaders who threatened to slay all. And who _had_ slain all, because he'd failed, and in so doing he'd failed his family as well as the people of Jerusalem – they were dead and he was broke. But here was enough gold that he could at least make good on one of those commitments. _If_ word of his betrayal didn't make it back to Cairo _and_ he was willing to lie about it.

He examined the coins in more detail, picking them up and checking their marks. Nicolò continued working his sword with no tension or insecurity to see Yusuf handling the funds. Yusuf saw that his expectation the money was looted was likely incorrect. The small coins – maybe – but the majority of the stacks was of a gold coin he didn't recognize. He picked one up and turned it over, proffering it in Nicolò's direction so he could more easily see it. "Where is this from?"

"Aurum," Nicolò replied with the word for gold in Latin.

Yusuf smiled blandly. "Yes, I know it is aurum. I am a merchant. This is something I actually know about. In Arabic, the word is gold. Gold."

"Gold," Nicolò repeated dutifully in Arabic. He continued with the tiny shard of a whetstone. His tongue was very distracting.

Yusuf cleared his throat and tried to stay focused on the money, which as an area of focus had never been a problem in his life before now. "Yes. Well. Where did it come from?"

"Belt." Nicolò pointed at one of the pouches. "In." He pointed at the stacks of coins. "Out."

"Now you're being a smartass. Thank you for that reminder of your stunning personality and imperfect grasp of the language." He examined the coin closer, seeing nothing on it he recognized. Greek maybe? But he was familiar with Greek coins and this wasn't one of them. "You come from Genova. Where does this coin come from?"

"Genova."

" _You_ come from Genova. Does the coin _also_ come from Genova?"

Nicolò gave him a straight look that showed he understood. "Yes."

Yusuf turned the coin in his fingers, looking at the stacks and trying not to be greedy. This was not his. At this point, not even half of it was his. It was all _theirs_. "Did you know this man? This Frank that we killed?"

"What is this dead Frank?" He was still saying 'what is this' as a single word. Yusuf found it too cute to correct.

"Um, yes. The dead Frank who owned this belt." He pointed at it.

"Not tomorrow?"

"I don't understand."

Nicolò paused, thinking. "Before today? Not tomorrow?"

"You mean yesterday? Yesterday, today, tomorrow?" Yusuf moved his hands to indicate a sequence.

"Yes. Crossbow Frank. I know … know him yesterday. Genoese, not Frank."

"One of your countrymen, then. Did you know him personally?"

"No Arabic." The answer came quickly enough that Yusuf wasn't certain if he didn't understand, or perhaps didn't want to answer.

He softened his voice. "Was he a friend?" Nicolò looked at him blankly. "I have used the word for friend between us before now. Do you know it?"

Nicolò made a very small gesture with one finger, indicating the two of them. "Friends?"

Yusuf breathed out heavily, relaxing into a warm feeling. "Yes. We are friends." How had that come to be over so few days? A pleased expression settled over Nicolò's face. He seemed to glow. His eyes were on Yusuf's face. Yusuf said, "You don't look that bad when you look like that. Come to think of it, you don't look nearly so bad now as you did a few days ago. Bathing and a bit of rest suits you. Imagine that."

He sighed wistfully and watched as Nicolò went back to working on a nick on his blade. Yusuf enjoyed watching him. Nicolò did not seem to mind being watched. He assumed Nicolò _would_ mind if he knew what all the sighing and staring was about. "The dead Genoese," Yusuf said after Nicolò moved on to another section, "was he a friend?"

"No."

"Good." For Nicolò's sake, he didn't want the man to have had to kill a friend. A fellow invader, a fellow countryman, was bad enough. The tally for each of them was now three of their own people, Yusuf realized – the same for both.

He looked at the other items. There was an ivory elephant statuette that he guessed was looted (but who could tell?) along with a chunk of quartz crystal. Each would fit in the palm of his hand. Besides the coins, there was a bundle of cloth he assumed was intended as bandages. They would not need them, but he didn't discard them. And then there was the bit of whetstone Nicolò was using and the tinderbox they'd used the previous night.

The belt itself was of fine manufacture and very new. It wasn't of local make. He picked it up and turned it over. "I heard that in Ma'arra the Franks were so hungry they ate every piece of leather in the city." He set down the belt. "Of course, I've also heard they ate all the people. You Genoese joined right before the siege of Jerusalem, so you would not have been there. Did you hear of Ma'arra? Was that why you came, I wonder, to help the Franks gain a speedy victory so there would not be such an atrocity again?"

Nicolò offered him the whetstone. "Ma'arra is bad. Bad is not good, yes? Malus?"

"Bad is not good. Ma'arra _was_ bad. Very bad." He took the whetstone and picked up his scimitar.

"'Was'," Nicolò mused. Then he asked, "You, Ma'arra?"

"No. But I heard about it. Is that truly what happened in Jerusalem after I left? Is that why you've turned against your people?"

"Jerusalem?"

"Yes. Tell me about Jerusalem, now that you have more words."

Nicolò started to speak a couple times, then said, "Jerusalem … was very bad. Franks … killed women. Killed children. Killed men no swords. Killed all. One house after one house. Kill all. All houses." He swallowed, his face taking on a haunted cast. "In the house. In the road. All … all Jerusalem. Dead. Killed."

"All?" Yusuf asked, boggled. Typically, conquerors would kill only soldiers, or if they were especially brutal, all the men of fighting age whether they were soldiers or not. To kill _everyone_ in a city was so heinous that even men of Yusuf's non-military background had taken up arms to oppose it at no more than the rumor. Jerusalem's people had died while Yusuf was escaping and while admittedly he'd been defending others who were fleeing the same fate, the guilt still weighed on him.

"All," Nicolò said bleakly.

"But they weren't starving," Yusuf argued, trying to find sense in it. "In Ma'arra, the Franks were starving to death. They ate their own dead as well, if the worst of the stories are true. They weren't in that situation in Jerusalem. They had food. There would be no reason to kill … everyone."

"No … No Arabic?"

Yusuf made an aggravated, dismissive wave. "You have already said. I had hoped the stories I had heard were false," Yusuf said, his voice hollow. "I had hoped they were exaggerations. I should have known the truth of it when you turned your sword on your companions in that room in Jericho. I suspected it then … but I wasn't certain." He was silent for a long beat, then asked, "Were you part of that?"

Nicolò looked at him uncertainly, but there was enough pain in his eyes that Yusuf nodded to himself and said, "No. You were not. And I know because you chased me out on the road to Jericho instead of staying in the city for the slaughter."

Though if he were honest, the killing was probably still going on when Nicolò returned. What he'd done then – joined in or excused himself – was between Nicolò and his conscience. Yusuf assumed he hadn't opposed it, because to do so would be death or imprisonment, and he'd been free and a soldier during the later attack on Jericho. At which time, he _had_ taken a stand in a situation where people could be saved and not merely have their execution pushed back an hour due to his interference. Yusuf turned to sharpening his sword, trying to smooth out the burrs from where he'd clashed it against other weapons or armor.

For a while, there was silence between them aside from the sound of the whetstone. It was solemn instead of awkward. Eventually, Nicolò asked, "You. Before Jerusalem?"

"Are we making conversation?" Yusuf smiled wryly and pulled his thoughts from regret and sorrow. "It is nice to have progressed beyond simple nouns. That is very good."

"You before Jerusalem?" Nicolò tried again.

"You are persistent as well, friend. Before the siege of Jerusalem, I was traveling and trading. Seeing where I could sell products for a higher price and then making arrangements for it to happen." He picked up a coin and showed it. "I was a merchant. I trade. Buy, sell? Understand?" Nicolò nodded a little. Yusuf said, "I am ashamed to admit I came north with the Egyptian Fatimids with some immature and incorrect ideas about profiting in a warzone. I saw the error of my ways and took up the sword to defend the faithful. Why did you come to Jerusalem?"

"Why Jerusalem?"

Yusuf asked the questions slowly so the sentence structure was clear. "Why were _you_ in Jerusalem? Who were you before Jerusalem?"

"God. God-men. Imams? Christian imams?"

"Priests?"

"Priests." Slowly, he said, "Priests say go. I go. I," he tapped his chest, "priest." He shrugged and grimaced like this was an irrelevant detail.

"You are a holy man?" Yusuf caught himself. "No, that is the wrong way to say it. You have taken vows? I don't even know how your religion is set up. Is it your job? Do you minister?"

"No Arabic."

Yusuf sighed. There were so many questions he had now, but they didn't have the language to discuss them. Nicolò's early insistence that they were of God came back to him. It was the reason Nicolò was with him – because they both happened to be able to heal. No other reason. Which was … disappointing. Yusuf grimaced. "Yes. Well. Very well. You were a priest in some capacity. But somewhere you learned to use that crossbow."

"Genova."

Yusuf nodded. "Genova. Do you want to go back to Genova?"

"No." He didn't seem conflicted about it – simple answer, direct.

Yusuf leaned forward, the beginnings of a plan sprouting in his mind. It was the money that had planted the seed. "Will you come with me to Cairo?"

"Where?"

"Cairo."

"I- No Arabic?"

"Egypt?"

"Yes, Egypt."

"How have you not heard of Cairo?" Yusuf exclaimed, throwing up a hand emphatically. "Everyone's heard of Cairo!"

"Kaido?" Nicolò said the word with a distinctly different pronunciation, the same sort Yusuf had heard from Greek sailors.

"Ah! Yes. Same city. _Cairo_. I was not born there, but we moved there after the Genoese razed most of Mahdia. My family had a trading house in Cairo, so they found … safety, of a sort, though our debts are many. Will you go there with me?" he entreated.

"Yes." Nicolò pointed the way they'd come the day before. "South?"

"Yes, you know where it is! I know it means retracing our steps, but yesterday I wasn't thinking very far ahead." Yesterday he had not had a plan besides getting away from Jericho. Now he had a goal and they could start making progress on it immediately.

* * *

Yusuf led them east to where he'd seen the goatherd. They followed goat paths that broadened into trails and then proper cart tracks. Below them in the valley, they could see the town he would soon find was named Pheselch. He left Nicolò to bide his time in a thicket and went into the settlement alone, prepared to pay gold where his silvered tongue could not persuade alone. He returned after some hours with two heavy packs and several fewer coins.

He had had to lie very little. A runner from Jericho had delivered news, but whatever description of himself had been included (assuming there were any) was not close enough for anyone to ask him challenging questions. Triumphantly, he announced to Nicolò, "I got you clothes. Take off what you're wearing so you can change." Yusuf pulled out a tan robe and a natural-color tunic with pants. He hung them carefully on one of the shrubs. "Take everything off except your boots. I have underclothes for you as well. Fresh ones!"

"Mutton stew?"

"No, I didn't get mutton stew, but you will like what I did get. Change clothes and we'll eat. I broke my fast, but I haven't had lunch." He collected Nicolò's armor and regarded it. Like his own, it was covered with the evidence of a dozen fatal encounters for its wearer. Where Yusuf had poorly stitched rents in the leather and slices into his steel plates, Nicolò was missing links in his mail, creating gaps where spearhead or sword had been applied with enough force to break whatever rivet or fastening was used to keep the links together. He assumed it could be mended, but mail armor was rare around here unless it was on the back of an invader. He doubted anyone other than an invader would be willing to wear it, which reduced its value to nothing.

Yusuf told him, "I was going to leave mine. It's not even worth selling and we will need the lighter load to move quickly. Are you keeping yours?"

"What?"

"Can I leave it? No armor. Zero armor." He dropped it over to the side where he had left his earlier. "Is that good?"

Nicolò looked at it lying on the dirt for a long moment, then nodded. He finished undressing and folded his ragged Genoese tabard, keeping it. "This in the pack."

"Alright." Yusuf assumed had some value as an identifier, or maybe just sentimental. There was a sigil on it that he'd seen on some of the other Franks at Jerusalem. It was light enough that it wouldn't slow them down to keep it. The rest of the old clothing was folded up for them to use to sit on. Yusuf got out their lunch while Nicolò pulled on the new clothes. "Here we have cooked eggs with onions, fried bread, and steamed greens, still a little warm. The rest of the food is more practical for travel. But I thought you might appreciate the indulgence of a fresh meal." Yusuf laid it out like a feast and for them, it was. He'd bought enough to feed four men.

Nicolò set to with an appetite that gave nothing an opportunity to spoil. "One last thing," Yusuf said when he was done. "Let me get this head-covering on you."

He stood before Nicolò and adjusted it on his head. He'd rinsed his hair thoroughly so it was … cleaner, but it was probably still better for everyone to have it covered. It was too light-colored and so fine that every breeze stirred it. It felt silken under his fingers as he wrapped the cloth around the man's head. Nicolò touched Yusuf's robes, tugging on the fabric. Yusuf glanced down and then up in question. They were very close, by necessity. Nicolò said, "Blue and grey," describing the color of Yusuf's garments.

"Like your eyes," Yusuf said, returning his attention to the head-covering and avoiding those eyes, which turned to him with sudden intensity.

"My eyes?"

"Yes, your eyes." Yusuf didn't meet them. He'd had few choices for color, but he'd chosen these intentionally. It seemed like a silly reason now. "You let this part hang loose and cover your face with it when anyone gets close. Like this."

He held it over Nicolò's face, touching his cheek and finally looking at his very distracting eyes. Most of the man's face was the same way. It was so peculiar; he didn't know if he'd ever get tired of looking at how singular his features were. He scoffed at the man's looks – they were not for him to be looking at so much, especially this close. "I'll just tell them you're terribly ugly. It will be easy to remember because it's true." He let the cloth drop.

.

.

Nicolò had an odd expression, mouth slightly open, eyes narrowed like he was realizing something. He tugged at Yusuf's robe again as Yusuf went to move away. "It's the same fabric – mine and yours," Yusuf told him as he took hold of his robe and pulled it free from Nicolò's persistent grip. He hoped the man didn't think he'd cheated him. Less dye did mean less expensive, but there was a reason for it: "Mine's dyed more so they'll speak to me first. Yours will stand out less. That's the only reason for the difference."

"You good," Nicolò said with an awkward urgency. "You are good."

Yusuf hesitated, trying to fathom his friend's meaning. "Thank you," he said, still confused. Nicolò nodded and smiled openly, broader than usual. It seemed to be the right answer. He looked happy, at least. And maybe embarrassed? Yusuf dismissed it. He had something he wanted to review. He squatted down and cleared an area in the dust. "Come here. Let me explain my plan. Do you know what a map is?" Nicolò was staring at him like Yusuf could be saying anything at all and the man wouldn't care. Weirdo.

"Look. This is important." Yusuf drew a line down the left and tapped the empty space next to it. "Water. The ocean. The Mediterranean Sea. Mare?" Nicolò nodded and moved to the side so he could see better, finally paying attention to the map. Yusuf drew a section to the lower right. "This is the Dead Sea." He drew a line up from it. "This is the Jordan River. We crossed it and then recrossed it coming back." He picked up a stone and put it near the middle. "This is Jericho."

"Ah, yes!" Nicolò said in sudden enthusiasm. He picked up another stone and set it to the left of Jericho. "Jerusalem!" Yusuf nodded. Nicolò picked up other stones and rapidly placed them along the coast. "Jaffa. Ashkelon."

"Yes, yes," Yusuf interrupted him. "That's good. I see you know what a map is. We're not going over there so you don't need to populate the entre coast. There are invaders there, so we're going the opposite direction." Nicolò dropped his extra rocks, eyes darting over the map now that he understood what Yusuf was doing. Yusuf spared him a glance. The man was far more literate than he'd given him credit for. He wondered if Nicolò knew the local geography better even than Yusuf did. And to think he'd called this man stupid.

Yusuf waved a hand over the region from Jericho to the Mediterranean Sea. "This entire area is war. No peace. The invaders are looting farms and homes. There are refugees everywhere. Those of the faithful who are able to fight are not organized. They move in bands like the one we were recruited into. Sometimes many move on the same target like Jericho, but there is no leader who is unifying them properly right now. The amir we met might – but not yet."

He gestured at the right side of the Jordan River. "Invaders have not been seen east of the Jordan River. If we go to Pheselch, we can get a boat across the river and then when night falls, there is a main road we can make good time on. We can go south past Shuna, take the east shore of the Dead Sea, and if the roads are clear, we will make Eloth in a few days. Then we go west to Cairo. I bought enough food to see us most of the way there. We should be able to buy more as long as war has not touched the marketplaces we pass near."

Nicolò squatted down next to him, resting his elbows on his knees and joining his hands together in prayer. He shut his eyes. It was a bizarre position to pray in, squatting like he was to relieve himself, but Yusuf waited respectfully. The religious practices of the Christians were largely unknown to him. He had managed to do his own prayer at the appointed time in Pheselch and left the experience with a renewed sense of purpose. He hoped Nicolò found the same. When Nicolò opened his eyes, he reached for the stick Yusuf had been using to draw, asking, "Please?" Yusuf handed it to him.

He gestured over the warzone with his empty hand, pointing as needed. "No peace. Invaders. Jerusalem. Jericho."

"Yes," Yusuf nodded, affirming the sum-up. Nicolò rested the stick on the stone that marked Jericho. "That is Jericho," Yusuf supplied. "It is only marginally held by the faithful. Any push by the invaders from Jerusalem and it will fall again. Or so say the men in Pheselch and I have no reason to doubt them. You and I saw it ourselves."

Nicolò nodded slowly. He drew a line between Jerusalem and Jericho. "Here," he said grimly.

"Here what?"

"I go. I go here. It is good. God is good."

Yusuf huffed a laugh, then another as he thought Nicolò must be joking. He did have such a strange sense of humor. "Why … why would you go there? You will be discovered." Whether by invaders or faithful, both had reason to hunt them. He'd be putting himself directly in the path of both.

Nicolò nodded. "No peace with Franks. My sword. Here." He tapped the spot decisively.

"Your sword? You'll go fight the Franks again? We- We don't have to do that." They were out of the war now. Their armor was lying in the dirt and they'd dressed in fresh new clothes that had not a blood stain on them.

"No Jerusalem. Not in Jericho."

Yusuf blinked at him in disbelief. "You're going to declare war against the invaders and hold them off from Jericho, _by yourself_?"

Nicolò gave him a regretful look, then nodded. "Yes."

"What? Why? What do you think that will accomplish?" Yusuf was dumbfounded.

Nicolò regarded him for a long moment. His expression faded into his own regrets. "No Jerusalem in Jericho," he repeated. "No Ma'arra. No killing all."

"But you are _one man_. _You_ will be killed. You have died a half dozen times at least, four or five from me!" Yusuf tried desperately to persuade him to see reason. "How do you know there is not a number or a method by which you will not return? God did not give us this life and make peace between us just for you to throw it away! They will find a way to keep you dead! Do you think I have not felt guilt every day for surviving Jerusalem? For surviving at all? Why do you think I have wandered without knowing where to turn, where to go, or what to do? Why do you think I have told no one of this gift we share?"

"I go," Nicolò said simply, like it was an immovable fact, not to be swayed by any other aspect of reality.

"Then you are a madman!" Yusuf burst out angrily, standing. "I have a plan here! We can escape! We will be safe. I will return home with the money my father ... I …" He trailed off. He hadn't done this for money. He hadn't done it for his own safety. He never had, even though those were the things everyone thought he should measure his life by. He had done it to save people's lives or die trying – which was exactly what Nicolò was going to go do. It was noble. Honorable. And when Yusuf had done it, he hadn't had anything else worth living for. Things were different now. His eyes were wet.

Nicolò wasn't looking at him anymore. He'd stood and went to pick up his mail armor Yusuf had cast aside earlier. He took off the tan robe so he could change back into the tattered raiment of war.

"I …" Yusuf started again and couldn't finish. He swallowed roughly and found his voice with a struggle. "I will not leave you."

Nicolò paused, looking back at him thoughtfully.

"I … I will go with you," Yusuf said, feeling tears streak his cheeks. "Although I don't know what I am agreeing to." Except the dying part. He was very sure this was going to involve a lot of dying. "I do not need to. All I need know is that we will be together."

Nicolò walked to him and put his hands on Yusuf's upper arms, relief and concern on his face. "You are good. You are good." He hugged him, saying quietly, "We are two. Two is good."

Yusuf chuckled hopelessly at his situation and hugged back, tucking his face down next to Nicolò's and breathing him in. "We are two fools. Crazy fools, to go back into the war and for what reason?" They separated. Yusuf said, "To stop the invaders from retaking Jericho? They've already taken what they wanted from it twice!"

"Third time tomorrow," Nicolò said with certainty.

"You are sure?"

Nicolò tapped his own chest. "Invader. Third time tomorrow. Day, day, war. Day, day, war." He paused and demonstrated on his fingers. "Travel. Rest. War. Travel. Rest. War."

"Ah," Yusuf said, nodding slowly. Jericho had been sacked the second time three days after the first. Tomorrow would be three days after that second time. The amir and others who had driven out the Franks would have stayed to secure the city and that illusion of safety would have lured back the refugees who had already planned to return. It wasn't an empty ruin. It was people's homes. Tomorrow, they would be there, trying to rebuild.

"I see, my friend," Yusuf said. "I did not know such men as you existed. Perhaps together we can buy the faithful enough time to solidify their hold on Jericho."

"It is good."

"It is good," Yusuf repeated.


	8. Spooning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Linaxart (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/linaxart).

They traveled south and west for the remainder of the day, avoiding taking the main road within the sight of the walls of Jericho. They could just barely see the place. No one from there would be able to see them clearly enough to care – not about two travelers keeping a low profile. They reached the road between Jerusalem and Jericho by nightfall and found a spot a little removed from the road to sleep.

Both of them wanted a full night of sleep; they did not stand watches. Yusuf dreamed of two women whom he'd seen in his dreams once a week before. They sat at a low table, feeding one another sweets. They were laughing. It felt like a good sign. He needed the reassurance, for he dreaded the day. This was going to hurt and the danger was great. It was arrogant to test the limits of their resurrection like this, but maybe together they could avoid the worst of it. And maybe, just maybe, they could make a difference. He prayed with the dawn.

Nicolò was right about the Frankish timing.

To retake (or perhaps merely continue sacking) Jericho, the Franks had sent a reasonable sally force of some hundred men, complete with wagons and outriders. He and Nicolò saw them coming from a good distance. They were able to walk right up to the column, which did not take two men in ragged armor seriously, especially when one of them was in Frankish garb. The invaders yelled some as the pair approached. Nicolò didn't have anything to say to them and so Yusuf didn't either (although Yusuf did not understand them in any case). They let their swords speak for them.

After that, it was a bloodbath. He remembered the first few exchanges with clarity. They killed a dozen men between them before they were finally put down like the maniacs they were no doubt assumed to be. Then they rose again. And again. And again. In the process, much of the group passed them by. Successive small batches stopped to engage them, each confused as to why the previous one hadn't succeeded in killing these idiots. The survivors of each congratulated themselves on their competency and moved on, leaving the men behind them to see to the wounded, and Yusuf and Nicolò to pick themselves up again.

By the time they reached the rear of the column, they'd managed to kill more than a third of their enemy. Word finally made it to the persons leading the expedition that something was seriously wrong. The two men they'd seen killed with their own eyes were _still_ cutting people down and there was a trail of bodies behind the force that was far more extensive than they'd believed. Yusuf and Nicolò had one final conflict where they were surrounded and pin cushioned with spears.

Although the two of them managed to kill no one in that skirmish, upon rising from the ground, they defeated them all. The invader's morale broke as every one of them at once saw they could not be killed. Yelling something about God, they fled back to Jerusalem, abandoning their wagons and wounded.

Giddiness swept over Yusuf as the panicked soldiers left (though his ebullience might have been due to blood loss). He hugged Nicolò hard enough to lift him from the ground, despite him being in that heavy, haggard armor of his and drenched with (mostly) his own blood. Yusuf laughed as Nicolò squirmed into a better position. The Genoese then kissed him soundly.

Yusuf almost dropped him in surprise. He definitely set him down. Yusuf was sure his eyes were comically wide. It wasn't that the act was unusual – it really wasn't, especially for brothers-in-arms – but all the feelings that flooded through him when it happened – those were novel. He'd been trying very hard to ignore those feelings. Hope flared up so hard inside him it took his breath away. Stupid, stupid hope. Nicolò backed up, then looked away. Yusuf took his cue from that and not only looked away but turned aside as he tried to get a grip on himself.

He was overwhelmed with his feelings. This ugly, bloodstained foreigner was someone he had come to cherish so much he'd passed up an easy opportunity to return home with glory (or at least money), so that he might instead fight by this man's side against impossible odds. He'd been killed more than a half dozen times that day. He'd done that. He was willing to do it again. And yes, while _some_ of this was to defend Jericho, a lot of it was just to stand by Nicolò's side.

Yusuf knew he should be satisfied with that. No kiss or look meant or could mean anything more. Nicolò was a Christian and some kind of holy man to boot. Yusuf was Muslim and Nicolò was a foreigner, such a stranger that he only counted within Yusuf's society if he were a slave, a servant, or an enemy (and maybe a trade customer, should Yusuf travel to Nicolò's lands, but that was only a different kind of enemy). To expect more, to ask for more, was folly.

He turned to ask a question he hadn't even finished articulating to himself, but Nicolò wasn't there to ask. He'd walked over to one of their enemies and was on one knee next to a man who obviously wasn't dead, having drawn himself to sitting next to a wagon wheel. He was not the only one still alive; they hadn't dealt every foe an instantly mortal wound, after all.

Nicolò was talking to the man, who was responding amicably enough, all things considered. They weren't going to fight. Yusuf started toward them, but then Nicolò made the sign of the cross and bowed his head in prayer. The man bowed as well. It felt private, so Yusuf looked away. He picked up Nicolò's sword, which had been dropped when he'd embraced him, and cleaned it. He cleaned his own and put it away. Both had a collection of nocks and dents that would need tending. When he was done, the prayer had been finished and Nicolò was helping the man up.

"What are we doing?" Yusuf said, drawing near.

"In wagon," Nicolò said. "Man go in wagon."

"Very well." Yusuf helped. One of the man's thighs bore a deep gash, as did one of his arms. Neither were bleeding much at this point, but both were serious injuries. The man said something to Nicolò, who responded. The last word was 'Jerusalem'.

"Are we sending him to Jerusalem?" Yusuf asked, handing Nicolò his sword.

Nicolò nodded, taking it and sheathing it. "Others?" He moved off, checking the bodies. Some were alive, yet mortally wounded. Those who were conscious, Nicolò prayed with and then gave them a merciful death. Those who were not conscious, he prayed over and did the same. Yusuf let Nicolò make these decisions, as they were his people and Yusuf did not feel it was his decision to make. There were nearly a dozen who were _not_ mortally wounded – they would live. They were carried or helped to stagger to the wagon and in this Yusuf made himself useful.

There was one with not a wound on him. Yusuf suspected he had fainted or pretended death out of cowardice, but given his own unmarred condition he found himself unable to criticize. That one was put in charge of driving the wagon. None of them gave them any trouble, though Nicolò's words to them likely had a great deal to do with that. Yusuf moved the dead out of the way while Nicolò guided the oxen to turn the vehicle around. The wagon trundled off in the direction it had come.

Two other wagons stood empty, originally intended to be filled with loot from Jericho. They captured two horses that had previously carried outriders. As they tethered these to one of the wagons, Yusuf pointed down the road toward Jericho. "There. Someone is coming. Riders." Nicolò looked. Yusuf said, "They must have seen the dust. They couldn't have made much of the battle at this distance from the city. Not even if they had a seeing glass."

Eight horsemen came up, which Yusuf suspected was the full mounted force of Jericho's garrison at the moment. Seven stopped at a signal from one, who came forward. His horse had only one eye – it was not a recent injury, but it was not the horse he'd had previously, either. Yusuf recognized the same man who had pressed them into service a few days ago – the man with a grey beard and a scar on his jaw, Amir Hilal al-Nu'man. The horse, he did not know.

Hilal walked his horse toward them slowly, stopping the moment Nicolò rested his hand on the pommel of his sword. Yusuf moved forward to put himself between the amir and Nicolò. "You two," Hilal said as though surprised at recognizing them. "You are wanted for killing six of my men in Jericho, and for looting. And here I find you, surrounded by," he looked around, counting, "some thirty dead men. Looting."

"We are not _looting_ ," Yusuf said irritably. "And we were not looting in Jericho, either."

Hilal winced uncomfortably, folding his hands over one another on the wide pommel of his saddle. He leaned forward. "I am the amir of Jericho now. You killed my men."

"Yes."

Hilal sighed. It was his duty to hold them accountable for that, as Yusuf well knew. Fortunately, the amir was not a hasty man. He looked around again. "Who killed these?"

"We did."

"You two?" He looked surprised again at the claim, as any reasonable person would.

"Yes."

Hilal rose in his stirrups and obviously scanned their surroundings. There were no other suspects; no signs of other people or allies. He sat back down. "I saw a wagon leave here."

Yusuf said, "We sent back their wounded as a lesson to the rest of the Franks of what will happen if they continue their invasion in this direction."

"Not just these thirty dead men, but there were more?" Yusuf didn't answer. Hilal grunted. "Your armor looks like it has been in fifty battles since last I saw you. And you are matted with blood."

"It is not my blood." That was a lie. "I am untouched." That was not. "Alhamdulillah."

"Hm." Hilal reined his horse away from them, walking it slowly to the nearest body. He bent slightly, looking down at the corpse. He guided his horse to the next and did the same. Then he spurred it to trot down the road past the wagons to look at the other bodies.

"What?" Nicolò asked. "What is that? Him?"

"He is trying to decide how two men defeated forty without taking a scratch. He thinks we had help."

The amir returned, giving them the same wide berth he had before and keeping a similar non-confrontational posture. He looked between the two of them as he spoke, looking for a reaction to his words. "No arrows. No bolts. No stones or more hoofprints than I would have expected. All dead by the sword. All Franks. Even if you had help, there would be at least some of your help here, dead. Or signs they had been dragged away. I saw none. Truly, this is a masterful deception."

Yusuf frowned. "It is no deception. God was with us this day. As God is with you, that we have thwarted this incursion against Jericho. This was a battle you and your men did not have to fight."

"Hm." Hilal sat his horse calmly and said nothing.

"What?" Nicolò asked Yusuf finally. "What is this word, hm?"

"He wants us to give him an explanation," Yusuf said, knowing the amir could hear his answer perfectly well. "I have told him the truth. There is nothing else to tell."

Hilal sighed and scratched at the scar in his greying beard. "I cannot let you back into Jericho. You killed six of my men and you do not deny it." He waited. Yusuf said nothing. He would not lessen his position by speaking just to fill the silence. Hilal continued, "What are you going to do with all this?"

Yusuf didn't have a plan, but he made one up on the spot since it was called for. "Send the dead to Jerusalem as well. Otherwise, they will attract lions and jackals, which will make the road a danger to honest travelers."

Hilal nodded. "I approve. We will take their equipment first."

Yusuf's frown deepened. " _We_ – Nicolò and I – will take those two horses and whatever we wish to carry on them and on our own backs. The rest you can have."

"You said you were not looting."

"These are invaders," Yusuf argued. "They are not godly men. This is the open road. If you controlled it, they would not have been upon it. And in Jericho, before? My friend was not looting then, either. The man he took from was his own countryman from Genova, whom he killed with his own blade and no help from any other. He was attacked without provocation _by your men_ while following _your_ orders. They tried to murder him."

The amir gave him a sour look. "That may be. I questioned them thoroughly and there were elements of their story that support you. I was also told you had each taken wounds enough to kill several men and had surely crawled off somewhere to die, yet here you are. Neither of you look sickly as you should if you were convalescing. So I must wonder, how much of what I was told of what happened to you in Jericho is true? And how much of what you are telling me happened _here_ is true?"

"I have not lied to you." Well … that was not exactly the truth, either. Yusuf had nearly had enough of this man.

"So you say. The horses, unladen," Hilal said, sitting straighter as he came to some decision. "With whatever you can carry."

"The horses, with the gear on them right now," Yusuf countered, not wanting to be denied the saddles through some failure to be specific. "With whatever we can carry."

Hilal nodded and lifted his reins. "Then we have a deal. You take the two horses as they stand and whatever you can carry. We'll take the rest. We will help you send the bodies back to Jerusalem for the Franks to dispose of in whatever gruesome manner they see fit. And you are not welcome within the walls of Jericho. Neither of you. Until and unless you answer for the killings of my men, even if that answer be to bring charges of your own, which I will entertain fairly."

Yusuf nodded and made a short bow. "I thank you for your wisdom. This is a gracious way to adjudicate the dilemma we find ourselves in." Yusuf turned to Nicolò and used simpler words. "They will help us. Those two horses are ours." He pointed at them. "Mine. Yours. Go and take whatever you want from the dead."

Nicolò nodded and did so, taking another quiver of crossbow bolts and extra bolts from a second man so that both his quivers would be full. He'd left the crossbow he already had with his gear, their food, and their new clothing, hidden off the road. Again, he demonstrated that he knew which pockets to rifle through based on only a cursory inspection of the fallen. By the time the riders had dismounted and were stripping the first set of bodies, Nicolò had returned to the horses and declared himself satisfied, depositing heavy pouches of coin into the saddlebag of the nearer horse.

In the meantime, Yusuf had taken wineskins and water bags. He stripped off his own armor, abandoning it for good this time. He tossed it on the pile of equipment the amir would take back to Jericho. Nicolò did the same, then pulled out the bandages and soaked them in water as the amir's men continued loading the wagons. Nicolò moved to Yusuf, "Come here," and to Yusuf's surprise, began to wash his face.

.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/192019661@N02/51035138853/in/photostream/)

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"Am I that filthy that it disturbs even your composure? I must be terrible." His voice was low. The intent look Nicolò was giving him was warming to see. He couldn't help but look at Nicolò with yearning. Nicolò was careful and quick on exposed skin. He cleaned gently over eyelids and even the outsides of his ears with a deft touch. Yusuf longed for more that he knew he shouldn't ask for. He was disappointed when Nicolò stopped after sopping at Yusuf's beard.

Nicolò rinsed the cloth and handed it to Yusuf. "Me? Please?"

Yusuf smiled softly. "You need not ask 'please'. I would do it regardless, for my own pleasure if nothing else." He lifted the cloth, thinking about what he'd just said and wondering how much of it Nicolò understood. Hastily, he teased, "I have to do something to make you easier to look upon. Otherwise, I might mistake you for one of the dead and run away myself, just like those Franks did. Truly, you are frightening to behold."

He cleaned off Nicolò's face, it being easier to do with less facial hair. "You have such a nose," Yusuf lamented, shaking his head as he cleaned it. "One would think with such a nose you would be more attentive to hygiene." He tapped the end of it gently. "You smell terrible. Although so do I. We need a bath."

"Bath is good," Nicolò nodded agreeably. He shut his eyes and relaxed where he stood, like nothing else mattered in the world. He leaned into it as Yusuf took his time cleaning his neck and ears. He rinsed the cloth and touched up Nicolò's moustache, then his lips. He lowered the cloth slowly, looking at those lips and thinking about the kiss he'd given with them. What had he meant by that? What were the Frankish (or Genoese, he supposed) customs around that sort of affection? Nicolò opened his eyes and asked, "Silence?"

"Ah, what?" Yusuf had to jerk himself out of the mental fugue he'd slipped into. Was there a smirk on Nicolò's face?

Nicolò's expression shifted to a genuine, if small, smile. "I go get crossbow and packs." He gestured in the direction where they'd cached their things. Yusuf nodded dumbly. He sighed as Nicolò walked away. He was really in trouble here. No degree of reasoned arguments were making his heart change its tune. Surely Nicolò was in a similar position to himself in not knowing the fine points of interpersonal mores for a foreign culture. He probably wasn't even recognizing Yusuf's lapses in decorum. Either that, or he was politely pretending he didn't notice them. But this was not going to go on forever. At some point, Nicolò was going to realize. He wasn't stupid and he wasn't a fool.

* * *

Many hands made light work. The bodies were stripped of anything usable and loaded into the wagons. They were a bit overloaded but the wheels still turned and the oxen managed. It was a level road and well-maintained. Nicolò and Yusuf mounted their newly acquired horses and led the wagons back to Jerusalem one after another.

Nicolò stopped them further out than Yusuf would have and pointed at two small stacks of rocks a score of paces ahead. They were on either side of the road. Yusuf hadn't seen them before and wouldn't have noticed them as significant if Nicolò hadn't pointed them out. Nicolò said, "Crossbow rocks. We stop here." To which Yusuf assumed he meant these were range markers for those on the walls who might wish to fire at them with crossbows.

They left the wagons laden with corpses there for the Franks to recover, turning their horses and hurrying back the way they'd come. It was late in the day by then. No one was foolish enough to chase after them. Once they were well out of sight, they cut south along a small path and took shelter in an intact barn next to a burned-out home.

The well was contaminated with dead chickens, but there was a stone trough of mossy, clear water near the barn that had been missed by whatever raiders had visited here. They let the horses drink and then they undressed and washed thoroughly, both hair and bodies. They dressed in the new clothes bought at Pheselch and retired to the barn. There was enough loose hay inside that they could bring in the horses, shut the barn door, and bed down themselves in a corner. They had little conversation through all of this.

They shared their rations for the night – salted meat and saltier biscuits with a few dried figs to give their tongues a break from the salt. Yusuf said, "I must have died at least six times today." He rubbed his hand across his chest. "It feels like there should be pain here, but there is none. I remember it. I remember the metal and wood inside my body, the heat of my blood on my skin. I remember the light-headedness, the weariness, and the dullness that comes before it all ends."

Nicolò didn't speak. He seemed to be staring off into nothing, half a fig forgotten in his hand.

Yusuf's voice turned heavy and depressed. "I know what death tastes like in many different preparations, all dishes I did not wish to try. This meal of ashes makes me sick." He returned the last biscuit to their pack, having no stomach for it. "I should sleep."

He scooped up some of the loose hay to make a comfortable sleeping spot (if one didn't mind being poked by loose hay stalks, which at this point he did not). He reclined on it and sighed when he still could not relax. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw men trying to kill him. His muscles would twitch and contract as he remembered their blows and how he'd tried to evade them. He remembered the weight of his armor, the dust in his nose, dirt caked on his face by his own sweat and blood after he'd fallen. He was trembling.

He tried to shake himself out of it by telling himself he'd been in battles before. He had, and he'd felt this way after all of them – the only exception being when he and Nicolò had fled Jericho. Marching all night had worked off every bit of excess energy he had, unlike now. He looked over to see Nicolò was still sitting up, head bowed, eyes shut, and hands clasped in prayer.

When Nicolò lifted his head, Yusuf asked, "You as well, my friend?" Nicolò looked over at him, a heart-sick look on his face. He crawled on the hay to join him and not merely to sleep on the hay, but actually right up next to him. "What-?" Yusuf said faintly, not sure what was going on.

"Thirty-one dead," was all Nicolò said. He reached across Yusuf to take one of Yusuf's arms, turned his back to him, and literally pulled him into a spooning position so that Yusuf was hugging him in addition to him hugging himself.

"Whu- uh … okay. Good." Yusuf stayed perfectly still for long enough to realize he himself had said the explanation for this: 'you as well,' although obviously Nicolò's thoughts were on those they'd slain instead of their own deaths. Selfless bastard.

Yusuf wrapped his arms around the man and embraced him. "We are together," Yusuf said quietly, his face tucked against the back of the other man's neck. He didn't smell that bad now. He smelled like the mossy water they'd used to bathe and under that he smelled like a man. Yusuf welcomed the distracting scent. He ceased to tremble. And his mind didn't trouble him with visions of his own death.

Nicolò nodded. "We are together."


	9. Forking

He woke with Nicolò still in his arms. He'd shared a bed as a boy, but not like this – never had he slept with anyone this close. He could feel the man's heartbeat under his palm on Nicolò's chest. He could feel Nicolò's breathing against his ribs with the rise and fall of Nicolò's back. He could feel his warmth all over him from face to feet. He was so alive. So much better than the bodies they'd moved the day before. People should not be so many sacks of grain to be hoisted and stacked. It sickened him to remember. Nicolò was different. Nicolò would never die. Or so he might hope, in idle fantasy.

He rolled onto his back before he did something imprudent like press a kiss to the man's neck. Nicolò followed him, moving to his back as well. He took Yusuf's hand and looked over at him with that intent gaze. Yusuf shut his eyes. He was still sleepy and didn't know what sort of expression he was supposed to be wearing after such a night and the warmth of the other man slowly fading from his limbs. His thoughts were sluggish and possibly horny.

Nicolò sat up abruptly. "War. We go."

"What?" Yusuf blinked his eyes open, trying to orient.

"I go. Jerusalem war fighters ride the road. I go."

"Huh?" He sat up, his eyes following Nicolò as he put on his sword belt over the tunic. He adjusted his clothing lest an inadvertent tenting of his robes draw unwanted attention.

"Men with swords and horses," Nicolò explained. "Franks from Jerusalem, on the road."

"We have not even broken fast." It wasn't about the food. He was still sleepy and still remembering holding Nicolò to him.

Nicolò gestured upward at the light streaming in between the planks of the barn. "The sun. It is day. I go. You … you sleep?"

"No, no," Yusuf protested, rising. "I'm getting up. You're not going alone as long as there is life in my body." He hurried to gather their few things, helped saddle the horses, led them to water, and then they rode out. "We had better not dirty these new clothes with more blood. I like them and it is hard to wash out in a horse trough," Yusuf complained as they went.

"Insha'Allah," Nicolò said. Yusuf couldn't decide if this was sarcasm or simple agreement. Either way, he followed. When they reached the road, it was empty. Yusuf had nearly convinced himself that Nicolò must have heard hoofbeats, for why otherwise would he be so keen to get out here and kill people? The Genoese rode slowly now, looking at the dirt and dust of the relatively level ancient roadbed.

"What do you see?" Yusuf asked. "Are you a tracker?"

"Wagons go west yesterday. Horses go west yesterday. No men or wagons or horses go east today."

Yusuf leaned over to regard the ground. "I suppose that's easy enough to see. I'm not sure how you're distinguishing the yesterday from today. They went both ways yesterday." Although the fine dust of the road made it easy to see the mess of tracks, they were confused and overlapping to Yusuf's eye. Nicolò seemed certain of what he read from it.

"There!"

Yusuf sat upright and looked where Nicolò pointed to the west. Now he did hear hoofbeats. Four riders were approaching from the direction of Jerusalem. "Ah. You knew they would be here. You Franks must be very regimented in your patrols. You've done war enough that you have a process." Which was not a compliment, nor meant as one. He squinted at the sun, not far over the horizon. "A dawn patrol, maybe?"

The four horsemen stopped some distance away, just within range to make a good visual identification of them. Two of the horsemen wheeled and went away toward Jerusalem at a quick pace. The other two came forward slowly. When they were close enough to call out, they stopped and did so. Nicolò answered them, saying something in Frankish or Ligurian about Jericho and Jerusalem, then about God. He waved at the heavens and crossed himself.

The two conferred between themselves and spoke to him again. He responded with fewer words this time. The tone had changed to conversational. Yusuf relaxed. The riders spoke again. Nicolò responded in the negative. They answered something else and the one speaking spat on the road. Nicolò put his hand on the grip of his sword and lifted his reins slightly.

Both of the riders took ridiculous fright at that small movement, with one jerking his horse about so hard the animal stumbled and nearly fell. The other man half-drew his sword as though to charge but didn't finish it, glaring at his companion and trying to work out if they were attacking or fleeing. In the end, they did neither, milling around and arguing with each other.

Yusuf eyed Nicolò. Since neither of the riders had actually left, Nicolò called something out to them. It had the tone of an ultimatum. "You tell …" something. Yusuf didn't understand the rest. At the end of it, Nicolò shook his head, lifted his hand from his weapon, and made a conciliatory gesture. The two riders nodded and rode away at a reasonable pace.

Nicolò looked to Yusuf, who smiled and said, "No Frankish."

Nicolò laughed out loud, snorting like an animal in the process. The sound made Yusuf laugh as well. Still laughing, Nicolò guided his horse next to Yusuf's and shoved him playfully. Yusuf said, "No, really, what did they say?"

"They come from Jerusalem. They go to Jerusalem. They _say_ no Jericho. No fight. Say, speak. Do?" He shrugged. "We watch the road."

Yusuf grunted. "They're either lying or their military is going somewhere else then. But we can't be everywhere at once and neither can they. We'll guard the road. Let's see if we can find a nice shaded spot to do it from, though. The sun will be high soon and we might as well be comfortable. I have breakfast to eat."

* * *

They built a fire, set up their sole ceramic pot (that Yusuf had purchased in Pheselch) in the coals, and filled it with water, barley, raisins, and sugar. Nicolò filched a few almonds from the packs and moved on to investigating the water skins after Yusuf shooed him away. Their saddles were on the ground in the deeper shade, arranged so they could lay against them and still have a good view of the road. Nicolò hefted one of the skins and said brightly, "Vino!"

"Wine," Yusuf corrected automatically, still working on breakfast.

Nicolò upended one of the containers for a long draw. He grimaced. "Not good wine."

"Has it turned?"

"What?"

"Is it vinegar?"

"Eh …?"

"Vinegar. Old wine. Sour." Nicolò still didn't know what he was saying. Yusuf mimed having tasted something disgusting and sour. "Blech!"

"Oh. No. Good to drink. Bad to taste."

"Ah." Yusuf reclined on the saddle nearer to him, leaving their breakfast to soak in heat so the barley would soften and plump. He might not be skilled at cooking meat, but breakfast cereal was something he could manage. He still wasn't sure the wine hadn't turned. There was one way to be sure. "Give me some?"

Nicolò reclined as well, propping himself up on an elbow. He passed over the wineskin. Yusuf sucked some down. It was fine, as far as wine went – not that he was much of an enophile. Nicolò said, "Muslim … Islam. No wine?"

Yusuf waved a hand generally. "No, I'm not supposed to drink this." He took another drink. "I'm also supposed to pray more than I have managed, although that can be excused in that we've been at war, traveling, or so filthy I would not present myself before God in any capacity, not even prayer. It is not proper.

"I would not be drinking this at all except that I am suspicious of the Frank's water, especially after seeing how those savages have poisoned the wells. All that water in the ground is connected, you know? Now even the Jerusalem wells will be tainted. It may be good enough for our horses, but we should not risk it. So I suppose an exception can be made again. God is … Al-Gaffar, I believe. The Pardoner. Forgiving." He took a third drink and said of the wine, "It is not so bad." He handed it back to Nicolò.

"You … have?"

"Yes?"

"You have bad wine," Nicolò finished. Yusuf laughed. "Bad taste."

"Oh, I do not know about that, my friend. I like _you_. Is my taste so bad then?" Yusuf gave him a considering, flirty look that he hoped would be read as teasing.

Nicolò gazed at him in return, then took another drink, looking at him the whole while. He did not look like he was teasing. One hundred percent of Nicolò's formidable focus and attention had Yusuf drawing in a breath and shifting his seat slightly. "No," Nicolò pronounced with such weight that Yusuf was scrambling to work out why he'd say it that way. What would someone who barely knew the language have thought he'd just asked?

_Is my taste so bad then?_

Yusuf cleared his throat abruptly, his face heating. "Ah, well, um … tell me what your Christian priests have as vows and limitations. I might need to know that. Soon." Nervously, he rambled on, "You would not believe the many things I have heard about how awful your lot is, that you seek out combat against us because you are so miserable in your worship."

"What is that word, vows and limitations?"

"Like a promise. Do you know promise?" Nicolò's brows drew together. Yusuf said, "No? It is like how a Muslim should not drink wine. Can you drink wine?"

"Yes."

"As a priest?"

"Yes."

"Can you marry?"

"What is that word, marry?"

"Man and woman, together." Yusuf helpfully added a lewd facsimile of sex using his hands. "Sometimes they do this." At Nicolò's uncertain brow twitch, he said, "They fuck." He gestured at his loins and made a single illustrative thrust.

"Ah." That much was understood.

"But first they marry," Yusuf said, "either with a ritual or an announcement. Then it is permitted that they enjoy one another. I have heard Christian priests may not do this."

"Christian priests … do not marry. They do not … fuck?"

"Ah. So that one's true, assuming we understand one another. Which is always suspect. I might say something metaphorical and get a … a very literal answer." Like how Nicolò liked the way he tasted. Seriously, how was he supposed to respond to that?!

"I am not a priest. I am a fighter."

Yusuf straightened. "What? I thought you said you were."

"I am a fighter. Not a priest _now_. Priest … yesterday. Many yesterday. War. No peace. Yes men? For God?" He gestured between the two of them.

"You used to be a priest, but you're not now?"

"Yes."

"Do priests not fight? Do they not go to war?"

"Priests … fight?"

And they were back to not understanding each other. Yusuf returned to the important part. Slowly, he said, "But you're not a priest … now?"

"Yes. Not a priest now."

"Hand me that wineskin." He finished it off with new enthusiasm. "Here I thought you were a holy man on pilgrimage, protecting your foreign virtue!" Well, that, and there had been one thing after another getting in the way.

"Eh?"

Yusuf sat up, trying to marshal his courage. His head was swimming a bit as he tried to decide if he should do something or say something. Both had risks. Before he made up his mind, Nicolò said, "War – after this war – ah, priest again."

Yusuf hesitated, feeling like the door he'd just found open before him was being slammed shut again. "I'm … not sure I follow."

"I am priest tomorrow. Many tomorrows. Or not now." He looked perplexed.

With an effort, Yusuf tamped down on his eagerness. What if he was still misinterpreting things? His thinking was muddled. "I think we are both drunk," Yusuf said finally. "Me with little history of the grape and both of us with empty stomachs." He turned to the barley and stirred it. It was ready. "We should eat before I do something regrettable." He heaped it onto the two small wooden trays that served as all-purpose plate and bowl, handing Nicolò his portion along with a spoon.

Nicolò said, "Pope Urban II. You know him? What is that Pope Urban II?"

His humor tickled by the wine, Yusuf laughed at how odd that sounded. "I've heard of him. A more correct way to say it is, 'Who is-' No, 'Do you know who Pope Urban II is?'" Nicolò repeated it a few times. Yusuf slumped back on his saddle, taking a few bites of barley as he listened to Nicolò's words. He was getting much better with sentences. Yusuf asked, "What of him?"

"He said … go to war. Fight. No …"

Yusuf's head came up. "No! I've heard of this ridiculous blasphemy from that man! He said you would have all your sins forgiven if you slaughtered our people! The ones of you who weren't simply being paid for it." Yusuf put down his spoon to tug at his beard. "So you were a priest. And something made you stop being a priest. And you came on this invasion so you would be re-instated as a priest, is that it?"

Nicolò looked puzzled. "No Arabic."

Yusuf chuckled. He assumed he was right and resumed eating for a few bites before he realized, "Wait. You're killing _Franks_ now. How does this work?"

Nicolò's small, helpless shrug was the funniest thing. Yusuf set his bowl down so he could fall backward against the saddle and laugh. He laughed until he was holding his stomach and worried he might become sick if he did not stop. By the time he was done chortling, Nicolò had finished eating.

Nicolò said, "You marry? You have a woman?"

"Ah, you want to change the subject now, do you? Well, that's fine. I might hurt myself laughing if we continue on that other one. You have yourself in quite a pickle there. No, I have not married." He picked up his tray and resumed eating.

"Why?"

"Well, the Genoese burned Mahdia twelve years ago. Remember that? I was a young man then, scion of a successful merchant family. Prime marriage material. Good-looking, too, but you already know that."

"Ah …" Nicolò's expression turned sad.

"Do not grieve," he waved his spoon generally. "At least not for the disruption to my marriage prospects. I wasn't interested in marrying anyway."

"No?"

"Well, you know," he gestured expansively, still somewhat drunk as the food hadn't had enough opportunity to sober him, "it is difficult for a Maghrebi to find a suitable match in Cairo. More difficult still when that Maghrebi travels a great deal, as I had taken it upon myself to do after my friend died. I just never met anyone I wanted to be with that badly. Not in any serious way." He studied this not-so-ugly Genoese's face before going back to his barley. He stirred it absently. "What about you? We are roughly of an age I think. Have you married? Maybe before you were a priest? Or after, I suppose, if it were recent."

"No. No marry. Married?"

"You would say it as 'Not married'."

"Not married. Not to a woman."

Yusuf chuckled wryly, finishing up his barley and chasing a stray raisin onto his spoon. "Now it sounds like you must have married a man."

"Yes." Nicolò sounded despondent.

Yusuf looked at him sharply, the raisin forgotten. "What?"

"Fuck." Nicolò mimicked Yusuf's earlier demonstration with his fingers.

Yusuf's eyes flew wide and his brows shot up in surprise. "You fucked a man?"

Nicolò blushed and grimaced. "No, it- I-" He stopped and made another helpless shrug like he'd done earlier.

"I must know!" Yusuf leaned toward him, not letting the matter drop. This was too important. "Did you fuck a man?"

Nicolò's mouth hung open for a moment before he said weakly, "Yes."

Yusuf's astonished brows shot up even higher. "You did?"

"The priest … big priest? His man and I fucked. Big priest, ah, angry? And I no priest then."

"You fucked a man," Yusuf said in wonder as he leaned back. The details didn't matter, though he could see Nicolò looked shame-faced about the incident. It couldn't have been _just_ the fucking – he noted the possessive 'his man' in there. But it was Nicolò's willingness to fuck men that definitely had Yusuf's attention. Not everyone did and the rumor was that Franks didn't _at all_ , due to their peculiar take on religion. What did it mean that _priests_ were fucking men when they weren't supposed to fuck anyone? Did that make it a special sin? Curiosity ate at him. "So you were with this other man-"

"Silence." Nicolò shook his head, both hands raised. "Silence, please. No more. _My friend_." He sounded anguished with that last.

Yusuf obeyed, chastened at having overstepped. He realized with embarrassment and elation how much they'd misunderstood each other. Nicolò was no more willing to jeopardize their friendship than Yusuf was. But the kiss, the hand-holding, the way they'd slept last night, the various looks Nicolò had given him – especially the one about his taste – Nicolò wanted him. That _had_ to be what all of that meant! Yusuf steeled himself.


	10. Full Meal Deal

He reached out slowly and snaked his hand around Nicolò's neck. He pulled. Nicolò resisted at first (and Yusuf's gut clenched at the possibility of having been wrong), but then he let himself be guided forward. Yusuf shut his eyes in relief and touched foreheads with him, still holding his breath. He stroked his fingertips lightly over the short, downy hair at the nape of the man's neck. This was so intimate; he hoped there was no possible way for Nicolò to misunderstand him.

Nicolò breathed out heavily like he'd finished a great exertion, his breath sweet from the wine. Yusuf turned his head in a slow and cautious repositioning. Nicolò could have backed out. He turned to meet Yusuf's lips instead. They kissed one another, light and careful, lips joining and rejoining as Yusuf finally breathed. He kneaded gently and reassuringly at the back of Nicolò's neck. He wanted Nicolò to know he wanted this, yearned for it, and lusted for it. The softest whine sounded in the back of his throat.

He leaned back against the saddle and Nicolò adjusted to follow him down. He moved over Yusuf, nudging his knees apart to plant one of his own between them. "Ah," Yusuf murmured with a rich satisfaction at Nicolò's assertiveness. "You are no blushing virgin. Though you said as much."

Nicolò went back to kissing him, bringing a hand up to touch at his beard, then dig at it or scratch at it with a wondering expression. Yusuf chuckled and reveled in the attention and touch. "Do not be deceived by my beard. I am amenable to anything your heart desires." He wasn't sure Nicolò would understand what he meant – the issue in question being more cultural than linguistic – but he had no chance to explain, nor any desire to interrupt their kissing to do so.

Nicolò's knee shifted up a little; Yusuf adjusted his balls and ground down on it. He made a stronger sound of want and made a fist in the fabric of Nicolò's robe and tunic. Nicolò bit Yusuf's lower lip, then kissed him messily, mouth wide, like he wanted to swallow his face. Yusuf pulled him down onto him, against him. They were both ready.

Nicolò sprang back and froze. Yusuf released the man's clothes and made a short, petting motion instead, assuming Nicolò's reaction was some kind of rejection of their imminent coupling. Maybe men fucked entirely differently in Genova. Quiet and tense, Yusuf said, "It's alright. It's alright. Good? Yes? We'll figure it out."

Nicolò sat on his heels and looked up and then down the road with his teeth slightly bared. He stared off to the west and exhaled a breathy sort of grunt. Yusuf followed his gaze. There were figures on the road from Jericho, too far away to see much of anything, but they were coming closer. The only good part of this was that Nicolò had not stopped out of lack of desire or due to some misstep on Yusuf's side.

Yusuf groaned and flopped back against the saddle in frustration and mock despair. Nicolò laughed at him and patted his chest a couple times before shifting away. The loss of his knee between Yusuf's thighs was especially grievous. "I finally, _finally_ get to this point and now people wish to travel?" Yusuf asked the universe rhetorically. "Where do they think they are going on this road? Jerusalem is still held by idiot Franks!"

He sat up and put his clothing to rights – not that they had _quite_ gotten to the point of disrobing. Nicolò took a heavy swig from a new wineskin. Yusuf openly leered at the way the man's throat bobbed. Nicolò wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, giving Yusuf a heated look. Yusuf promised, "A temporary pause, no more." He got to his feet, strapped on his sword belt, and marched sullenly to the road. In the lead of the group was the amir on that one-eyed horse. Seeing Yusuf, he urged the horse to a canter and pulled ahead.

"You're still here!" the amir called out cheerfully.

Yusuf found a reluctant smile creeping onto his face regardless of his intention to be dour and forbidding. It was _this_ asshole again. It felt very fitting that of all the people who could appear to interfere with his (potential) love life, it would be this guy. He nodded. "I am still here. The road is still here. The Franks are still in Jerusalem. But they are not in Jericho and we will keep it that way."

The amir stopped his horse. "Have you had any battles today?"

"Only with my patience." The amir tilted his head in curiosity. Yusuf gestured to the east. "They sent out riders this morning – a dawn patrol. Nicolò told them to go away and they did." Nicolò had, by this point, joined him on the road. He stood behind him a few paces and let Yusuf carry the conversation as usual.

"That is good," the amir said. "How long will you be staying here?"

Yusuf really wasn't interested in making conversation, especially about something he hadn't given much thought to and which seemed secondary to the business he'd been engaged in before the amir showed up to interrupt things. He said challengingly, "How long before you have a proper defense of Jericho, so we do not need to be out here in the heat, guarding your exposed flank?"

The amir's brows rose at the impertinence. But he laughed. "You have the boldness of a righteous man!" He slapped his thigh in amusement. "Two weeks. Maybe a month."

"I did not bring supplies for two weeks," Yusuf said testily. "Much less a month."

"I suspected as much."

Yusuf bristled. "You want us to leave then?"

"No." The amir's answer was quick and definite, almost interrupting him and definitely stopping him from saying more. "I do not command you, but I hope you will continue to follow your conscience."

Yusuf narrowed his eyes at the man, then glanced past him at the rest of the group coming up. It was a cart drawn by a donkey, with an older man leading it and a younger woman next to him. A few others followed behind, not in any sort of armor. They looked like townspeople. There were also four other riders and two soldiers on foot. Yusuf wasn't sure what to make of them. "Are they going to Jerusalem? It is not safe."

"No, they are not going to Jerusalem," Hilal said. "When I returned to Jericho yesterday and told your story, there were some who worried on your behalf. And while they were unable to persuade me to allow you refuge and resupply within the walls of Jericho," he paused for a moment, "as you yourself have observed, this is the open road and I have no authority here. So what happens here, to you, and to him, is not my business."

Yusuf felt one last stab of concern that the amir was threatening him somehow before he finally put it all together. The people with the wagon were close enough now that he could tell the man was vaguely familiar and the woman more. She was the one who they'd helped escape the city, the one whom Nicolò had turned on his people to save. The townspeople were a few who had been with the wagon they'd followed to Shuna. He'd spoken with them at the pavilion next to the ford.

With wide eyes, Yusuf glanced back at the amir, who waved his hand to indicate Yusuf was free to pass him. Curious, he went to meet the cart. The older man leading it was the one who'd taken the child from him when they'd met out on the road in the darkness. The man nodded and bowed to him. "You brought us our children and Inaya, who otherwise would have died in Jericho." He gestured to the woman next to him. "It is the least we can do to bring you comforts while you protect our homes."

"Comforts?"

"Food, water, blankets, a tent for shade, fodder for your horses – that was the amir's ide-"

"I have nothing to do with any of this," the amir interrupted, turning his horse to face them. "The fodder is for the donkey, but we may decide to leave it here so the cart is lighter on the way back. Speaking of which, the animal is tired and the day is getting warm. All of this needs to go. We will not need these supplies as we go back." He gave directions to the two soldiers on foot, who began to unload the cart, piling baskets and parcels at the side of the road with the help of the townspeople.

Yusuf blinked in surprise at the unexpected and unasked for gratitude. His eyes teared. They might be outcasts, officially, but they were not forgotten or unappreciated. The woman, Inaya, took a package from the cart and brought it to Yusuf. "My jadda made this for you."

"Your … grandmother?" he guessed, as the term wasn't the one used where he'd grown up.

"You met her." Inaya looked to the side and smiled tightly. "She was, ah, unwelcoming." She looked back with a little mischief in her eyes. "She says is it good that you stay out here, away from everyone else, and if she has to send you bread to keep you out, then she will send bread." She presented him with a loaf wrapped in a towel. "She means well, I promise." She handed a second to Nicolò, who had come up behind him.

Nicolò hefted and squeezed it. "Bread?"

"Yes," Yusuf told him.

"Thank you," Nicolò said.

"I met her?" Yusuf asked, thinking of who she must mean. "The old woman who …" called me a foreigner and Nicolò an invader and carried on about neither of us being allowed to travel with them. But Yusuf didn't add that part. He had to wonder if the bread might be poisoned, but surely not.

"Yes," Inaya said. "She did not know what you had done for me and for her grandchildren. She thought we had just found each other on the road and you were …," she hesitated, then continued, "that you had run away from the battle."

"Ah. Well, it was an easy mistake to make," he said dryly, not enthused at having been mistaken for a coward and not missing that the woman still didn't want him around. He lifted the loaf – it was a good size. He decided he could afford to be gracious. "You may thank her from me as well."

The unloading was finished. The empty cart was turned around. The amir stopped next to him to say, "I will send a patrol every few days to see if the road is clear. They will bring fresh water and a little food in case there are weary travelers who need it." Meaning he would continue their provisions, enabling them to stay here if they chose, although he could not admit to supporting them specifically. "They will announce when we have secured the town, should you still be here to hear them."

"We will be here," Yusuf said. "And thank you." This he could offer whole-heartedly, for the amir was bending several customs to help them.

"It pains me to say, but I cannot accept your thanks," the amir answered with a wince. "You remain outside the law until you stand in judgment. While you may present your case and such may mitigate the penalty, it is very likely there will still be one. I asked more questions last night, on your behalf." He paused to add weight to his next words: "The Frank struck first." The amir was silent after this pronouncement, studying Yusuf for a reaction.

Yusuf said nothing, unwilling to confirm their guilt or deny and lie. And here he had thought for a moment their sins would be forgotten and their virtues extoled. But the men they'd killed doubtless had families and those families were undoubtably angry. They would not forget the murder of their men by fellow soldiers. Nicolò _had_ struck first and however morally right Yusuf thought him to be in that, given the particulars of the situation, it made a critical legal difference.

The amir finally continued, "I'm not sure it matters, though. As I said, I asked many questions. It seems possible that whatever penalty were assessed, you might survive it."

He knew. The bastard _knew_. Which shouldn't have been a huge surprise, seeing as to the trail of witnesses Yusuf and Nicolò had left behind them and the man's own keen powers of observation. Yusuf took a nervous step back, hand on the grip of his sword. Nicolò appeared next to him in an instant, alert, but weapon undrawn. The saving grace of the situation was that the amir's men seemed to have only the faintest awareness of a problem, with only a couple of the other riders perking up. If Hilal had meant them ill, he wouldn't have organized it this poorly.

Both the amir's hands rose slowly, palms to them. "Peace be upon us. It was only an observation." He put his hands down and added in a sympathetic voice, "This is not your land or your people. There is no reason for you to face justice here, or for the curiosity of an old man to be satisfied."

Yusuf nodded slowly, relaxing his stance in relief. Cautiously, he offered, "If we are safe here, and untroubled, then we will remain and stop the Franks until Jericho is fortified."

"You are safe from my side. I cannot speak for the Franks or what trouble they might give you."

Yusuf nodded again, relaxing further. He took the man at his word. "You may not be able to accept it, but you have my gratitude."

The man nodded and nudged the flanks of his one-eyed horse to follow the cart as it trundled away. The others waved brief good-byes. Yusuf didn't know their names. He wondered how many might have died if the Franks had made it to Jericho the day before. But none had. He felt uplifted. And justified.

Yusuf looked over as Nicolò unwrapped his bread. It was golden brown with seeds on top of it, smelled of honey, and was shiny with egg wash. It looked incredible. How had she managed to make this in a day? He was reminded of one of his mother's sayings: Old women work miracles. Nicolò tore off a bit and tasted. "It is good."

"Is it?" Yusuf asked, smiling at him. Aside from the possibility of having to fight more Franks, being stuck out here for a month was sounding better and better. They would have a tent to shield them from prying eyes, blankets to kneel on … he wondered if they'd sent any oil?

He snapped out of his reverie to realize Nicolò had lifted a small hunk of fragrant bread to his face. "Eat?" Nicolò said.

Yusuf grinned wider and opened his mouth, indulgently letting the man feed him the morsel. Nicolò smiled broadly. Yusuf chewed and swallowed. It was delicious – nothing poisonous about it. "Yes. It is good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In our real history, Jericho was taken by the invading armies from Europe. It was held for a few years before the Franks were driven out. The research I did didn't indicate what condition the city must have been by the end of that uncertain, hostile occupation, but I can't imagine it was good, or that many of the original residents who had called it home were still alive to do so, especially given the bloodthirsty practices that featured strongly in the Frankish military campaign.
> 
> In *this* story, Jericho still fell initially, but with the disruption caused by Yusuf and Nicolò, the faithful were able to retake and fortify. People returned to their homes. And the Frankish army passed on.


End file.
